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Notes -
"Other party distracted by infighting over which of a smallish number of fairly unpopular candidates to chose until a couple of months before the election" seems like a pretty good development to me?
The problem (for Trump) is the Democrats might be able to find someone better than Biden or Harris. Democratic and swing voters will vote Democratic versus Trump unless the particular candidate is really, really bad. So the Democrats just need a nullity and they win. So probably not Harris, Clinton, or Buttigieg, but maybe Newsom or Whitmer (who have negatives but not quite so bad)
Kamala is the only person with democratic legitimacy to replace Biden. Everybody knows that the one job of the vice president is to take over if the president dies or quits. Everyone who voted for Biden had that understanding.
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Maybe. Or maybe the fact that the Democrat's nakedly lied to the American people about Biden's fitness to serve for years brings shame on the party, regardless of who the candidate ultimately ends up being. They all stink of complicity. Some more than others, granted.
I remember my father, a lifelong Republican, talked about how the only time he ever voted Democrat was for Carter, because of how deeply ashamed he was of the entire Republican party after Nixon. He regretted that vote until the day he died, but he was still demoralized enough at the time to have made that decision.
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Right -- and if they'd hit Biden with the 25A two weeks ago (or earlier ideally, given that his cabinet has obviously known what he's like for some time), let Kamala have her 'first Black Woman President' and pulled off some sort of quicky primary/open convention resulting in Newsom or an even more generic Dem-bot as the candidate going forward -- that would have been a bad development for Trump.
As it is they are either continuing to ride Biden (pretty good for Trump) or squabbling over an ineffectual coup for several more weeks (during which time any campaigning Biden might do will be of questionable-to-negative value) then (probably) putting up one of the unpopular people.
This seems pretty good for Trump too!
Maybe even better than facing Biden, since it puts the lie to the Democrats as a whole being anti-chaos and/or trustworthy.
On the other hand, the earlier the democrats have a candidate, the earlier you the republicans can prepare attacks, see what sticks, target voters, see how things are going, rather than only have a short period of time to work that out. You lose out on all the "he's too old" concerns that everybody's been convinced of, with now your own candidate looking weaker in that respect comparatively.
I’d be shocked if republicans didn’t have attack ads ready to go on a moment’s notice against Newsom, Harris, big gretch, buttigieg, etc.
But do they work? What would the actual voting shares be? Things look different, I think, when you're talking about hypothetical candidate Newsom/Harris/etc. versus actual candidate Newsom/Harris/etc.
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