@curious_straight_ca comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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Campaign research said yes — Biden could win with any of the four. Klain argued for Harris specifically. Obama played the role of sounding board, weighing the pros and cons of Biden’s options rather than backing anyone, including Harris, according to a person familiar with the conversation. But Harris was the only candidate who had the full complement of qualifications: She had won statewide, was a familiar name with voters because of her presidential run and enjoyed a personal connection with the Biden family, having been a close working partner of Biden’s son, Beau, when he served as attorney general of Delaware.

And she was Black, meaning the announcement would be met with enthusiasm rather than controversy. On Aug. 11, the day the campaign announced Harris as the running mate, it raised $26 million in 24 hours.

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curious_straight_ca 4mo ago · Edited 4mo ago

I'll still give Biden some personal credit for the Afghanistan withdrawal though.

Kamala seems most likely, for legal-fundraising reasons

I think this is wrong and misses why people support Harris, it's not exactly a tactical decision. Money isn't as important as people think for presidential elections - voters are voting for, above all, a party and a candidate, it's the face they'll see and the voice they'll hear. And Dem donors will still have piles of money available for any non-Harris candidate. Harris is, in my opinion, not a good candidate. She's not popular, with an approval rating virtually equivalent to biden's 37% (although biden's disapprove is 6 higher). She was received poorly in the 2020 primary. I don't feel the charisma whe nwatching her. The clips of her going viral on social media are of her making statements that are ironically endearing for their strangeness, greatest hits compiled here, and I'm not sure this'll translate to excitement among swing voters. In head to head polls she doesn't do much better than Biden, and though none of the governor alternatives do better either Harris has less of a name recognition gap to make up for. And she's burdened with the Biden brand - inflation, the age issues, and a cloud of malaise generally. I don't think money can make up for this! The recent Republican local races demonstrate the importance of candidate quality over anything else.

Even ignoring that, though, I think the campaign finance issues are overstated. The articles claiming this supports harris say things like:

The campaign could also give it all to the Democratic National Committee, but even with the DNC, there are rules governing coordinating with candidates that curb how freely the committee can spend. “That’s not necessarily as effective as a campaign spending money itself,” Noble said.

UPDATE: There is a possibility that the campaign committee funds could be transferred to the Democratic National Committee. But the DNC could then only give up to $5,000 directly to a candidate. It could use the funds on behalf of the candidate, but again the coordination and ad rate questions come up. And it is possible that Kamala Harris would have to comply with a transfer of those funds in that manner, in a scenario where she was just passed over for the top of the ticket.

Sure, "coordination costs" and "ad rate questions" mean it's "not necessarily as effective" as if Harris gets the money directly. It's not ideal. That language is a bit wishy-washy though. And using it to justify "practically speaking, Biden and Harris are really the only two choices available at this late stage of the campaign" seems to overstep.

And reviewing the language in those articles

That hasn’t stopped the endless fantasy league scenarios from those who see no avenue for Biden to defeat Donald Trump in November. ... This is a tremendous insult to Kamala Harris, who Biden himself handpicked as his second in command.

And it is possible that Kamala Harris would have to comply with a transfer of those funds in that manner, in a scenario where she was just passed over for the top of the ticket

One gets the sense that the desire for nominee Harris doesn't come entirely from pragmatism. She's the First Black Woman Vice President, and denying her the nomination SHE deserves is an insult. I get the same feeling from other pro-Harris arguments - "voters will be outraged that you passed over the Black Woman VP". Someone will be outraged, sure, but is it really voters, or is it the author? I taste notes of RBG's and Sotomayor's potential retirements here. It's not just that though, speculating, I think a novel and complicated plan like 'hold mini-primaries' is difficult to believe in, and feels dangerous in, in an environment with a weak 'party' where power is very decentralized and depends on networks of relationships. "The CEO will just declare it's time for primaries and pick someone good to run them" isn't the kind of thing that happens, but "she's my guy so I'll support her" and "looks like the consensus is moving towards her so i'm moving there too" is something that happens a lot. It's not an environment that cultivates the agency of individuals or the group.

A Matthew Yglesias post, "VP selections aren’t taken seriously enough" (of course with Matt, there's a framing making it look like he isn't picking on Harris), touches on all of these issues.

All the wrong reasons

The Herndon profile in particular is really clear on two things:

Biden was facing a lot of pressure from various inside party actors to select a Black woman, which in practice meant Harris.

Despite this, nobody was telling Biden that selecting Harris had significant electoral benefits. There was no polling or data or demographic analysis that suggested this “you should pick a Black woman” vibe was correct.

Here’s how Herndon describes the final showdown between Harris and Gretchen Whitmer:

After Whitmer impressed Biden during an in-person meeting in the veepstakes’ final stages, one question rose to the top: Could two white Democrats win?

None of this is wrong, exactly. But note that in his telling, there is not a point in the process where Biden stops and thinks “who will be the best candidate in 2028?” or “if I die, who will be the best person to take over?” But note that even leaving Biden’s age out of it, the base rate for presidential death or resignation is nearly one in five!

Instead the decisive characteristic was that Harris would generate more enthusiasm.

And here I do think I should be clear about what I think this meant in practice: Picking Harris minimized short-term complaining. Plenty of people would have been thrilled with Whitmer and plenty of people were not thrilled with Harris. But as a rare person who criticized the Harris selection at the time, I know that given the atmosphere prevailing in the summer of 2020, that made me a kind of un-fun skunk at the party. By contrast, Harris proponents would have felt empowered to complain about a Whitmer selection. And to be clear, in Harris’ defense, she really is a properly qualified choice. The discourse around her has gotten so mean you’d think this was the greatest debacle in VP selection history when it’s not even close.

The problem is that this kind of fuzzy, short-term thinking is extremely common.

Again, the core absurdity of Democrats’ current Old President problem is that if you go back to the 2008 coverage of the Obama/Biden ticket, he was picked precisely because he was too old:

The choice by Mr. Obama in some ways mirrors the choice by Mr. Bush of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000; at his age, it appears unlikely that Mr. Biden would be in a position to run for president should Mr. Obama win and serve two terms. Shorn of any remaining ambition to run for president on his own, he could find himself in a less complex political relationship with Mr. Obama than most vice presidents have with their presidents.

Oops!

Yes, indeed, Matthew. Oops. Oops all around.

But, of course, there are many worse screwups than this. If you go back to the fateful election of 1840, the Whigs put John Tyler on the ticket because he didn’t like Andrew Johnson without checking to see if Tyler was on board with Whig policies. William Henry Harrison died after 40 days in office, Tyler became president, and it turned out that — oops! — he did not agree with those policies

In the scheme of things, Harris is actually a totally fine choice. She is in line with the party mainstream on policy and ideology and is of appropriate age to take over, which sounds like a low bar to pass but is actually impressive in comparative terms.

Framing!

I believe that in part because I continue to think there is a pretty obvious way for her to get her mojo back. The basic reality is that Americans of all kinds put a good deal of stock into the personal identity of our political figures. And progressive Americans put even more stock into it than average Americans.

By the same token, there are certain things that Harris as a Black woman “can” say that Joe Biden as a white man “can’t” say — i.e., things that are moderate-coded about race and gender matters.

Sure. If she does this and wins the mini-primary with that, more power to her.

More Matt, "Kamala Harris should try to be really popular ... In spite of all!":

Perhaps the worst-kept secret in Washington is that tons of Democrats are terrified of the prospect of Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic Party presidential nominee at some point in the future.

Indeed, it’s such a poorly kept secret that it’s barely even a secret. For example, even though officially Biden has not announced a reelection bid — and given his age, this is formally an open question — absolutely everyone wants him to run again. But the terror is that he might not, or even if he does, he might not make it all the way through eight years. But beyond the possibility that Biden would die or step down, if he serves through 2028, it seems overwhelmingly likely that she’d win a primary.

Why are people scared? Well, mostly because her approval rating lags stubbornly behind Biden’s.

Personally, I am not that scared of her current approval numbers. What scares me instead is the reaction that you hear from the Harrisverse to these worries, which is mostly to accuse critics of sexism or to attribute her political problems to sexism. Indeed, just typing this paragraph I can feel the people getting ready to yell at me on Twitter. But my point isn’t to deny that sexism is real (it clearly is) or that it’s felt by women in politics (it clearly is) but that this kind of fatalism is paralyzing and politically deadly. There are women in politics who are popular and successful at winning tough races, and they didn’t do it by making sexism vanish from the planet earth any more than Barack Obama and Raphael Warnock ended racism.

Powerful framing. I do kinda enjoy reading matt's subtle contortions.

To give the dems some credit, there's been a lot of talk about nominating someone other than Harris and miniprimaries, it could even happen.

(matt's source for obama biden age isn't great, but other reporting linked from here confirms it)

Context

FiveHourMarathon Listen to Pierre curious_straight_ca 4mo ago

A core part of the priors that lead me to settle on Harris as the pick: I am pessimistic about the Dems chances in this situation. Any hot swap other than an assassination of Joe Biden, which would clearly result in a Harris pick anyway, likely leads to a doomed Quixotic post-Biden campaign, designed more to put up a good show and avoid embarrassment than it is to win the electoral college. Given that, there is value for Dems in avoiding other issues.

Imagine a group of three coworkers, who travel together for work and take turns picking the place for lunch. One of them has horrendously bad taste, picking Subway or Checkers or Cracker Barrel some other bottom tier chain. It's his turn today, and everyone is dreading it, but they stopped for lunch at a turnpike rest stop anyway and he's picking among those options. It's not worth fighting him on his turn, even though his pick will suck, because lunch is going to be mediocre at best anyway.

curious_straight_ca FiveHourMarathon 4mo ago

I strongly disagree, actually! I think a non-Biden/Harris/Newsom nominee is around 50% to win. Both Biden and Trump are historically unpopular presidential candidates, they poll terribly, both in approvals and in poll questions like 'are they fit to / too old to run'. I don't think the short period of time between now and the election is an issue, in part because American election seasons are just so much longer than other countries. There are a lot of options (Shapiro? Beshear? warnock?). Whitmer and co tie with biden in head-to-head polls, but I think that's mostly name recognition, once everyone's seen their face and the energy of a young candidate charismatic enough to be popular in their own state they should surge.

Name recognition is a double edged sword. Republicans don't realize they hate those names, because the right wing hate machine and oppo-research industrial complex hasn't been spun up against them yet. The most milquetoast middle of the road non-entities get turned into snarling monsters by the partisan media, from John Boehner and Paul Ryan to Joe Biden himself.

Though I would love to see Shapiro repeat his Gubernatorial campaign strategy of just repeatedly trying to bait his opponent into saying something about him being a Jew, and playing campaign attack ads that are just things his opponent said.

JulianRota FiveHourMarathon 4mo ago

Seems to me, none of the Democrats' options look great now.

Stick with Biden-Harris, come what may. But can he handle a full campaign season? Will he have another Senior Moment? Will all the big donors believe he can do a full campaign without one? If his handlers keep him hidden away for the whole season, the voters will likely guess why and may react accordingly.
Somehow dump Biden, full steam ahead with Harris-?. But is Harris much better of a candidate than Biden? What kind of influence will they need to convince Biden of this and how will it look if he doesn't go along so easily? But at least it isn't too bureaucratically weird.
Somehow dump both Biden and Harris and run a campaign with some decent Governor or Senator. Might be a better candidate than either of the others, but how will the bureaucratic weirdness that would be necessary to do this affect the voters' confidence in the Democrat ticket? How much of a mess might Biden and/or Harris make on the way out? Not to mention the optics of kneecapping the female POC with the progressive wing.

curious_straight_ca JulianRota 4mo ago · Edited 4mo ago

but how will the bureaucratic weirdness that would be necessary to do this affect the voters' confidence in the Democrat ticket

I don't really buy this. People are voting against Biden and Trump more than they're voting for them, and a young and confident voice saying all the right things will pick up a lot of votes, I think. "They're both too old" is an extremely common position, and I think that'll dominate any concerns about someone who wins a second "primary".

How much of a mess might Biden and/or Harris make on the way out

In terms of accusations / insults, past Dem nomination fights were bloody but that didn't really spill over into the general. And we're still months out, elections take around a month in some nations. In terms of throwing up procedural / legal issues, I doubt that's too big of an issue.

Not to mention the optics of kneecapping the female POC with the progressive wing.

I think it's a much bigger problem with the progressive wing of the elites than it is with the voters. Could just go Whitmer w/ black VP or something.

JulianRota curious_straight_ca 4mo ago

What I'm talking about is, most of the discussion has assumed that both Biden and Harris agree to step down voluntarily. What happens if one or both of them don't? Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation? How long would that process take, and how sketchy would it look?

If anything like that happens, I would presume the Dem party leadership expects it to all happen behind closed doors. If it ends up taking months and has at least bits of it leaking out into the public, well, it looks pretty banana-republic to me. Though maybe not necessarily more so than all the other stuff that's happened over the last 8 years? Maybe the voters won't care that much if they manage to get somebody young and confident in there somehow, or maybe not.

curious_straight_ca JulianRota 4mo ago

What happens if one or both of them don't

Yeah, most Biden-alternative discussion is premised on Biden choosing to back out, since he controls the delegates. There's a general sense there's a solid chance this happens.

Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation

Delegates could, in theory, reject Biden, the delegates are only obligated to "in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them". This seems difficult and unlikely though.

FiveHourMarathon Listen to Pierre JulianRota 4mo ago

Exactly. That's the point I've been trying to make here. Realistic assessment is that the Dems are deep underdogs for the presidency after that debate. Biden was already behind, which is bad, and he lost ground, which is worse, but worst of all by far he clearly lacks the juice to make up that kind of ground. Any chance the Dems have of winning is relying on Trump to self immolate. They're picking among bad options to cauterize the wound.

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