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Notes -
I don’t think this captures the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party. It isn’t a monolith.
It’s hard to go against an incumbent and the Bidens as a family, are very clannish (small-c, not ‘k’, please). When you say, “…they thought they could hide Biden’s senility…”, that is certainly true for the Bidens, as they shrank the inner circle around and access to Joe as criticism mounted.
Plus, a particular source of stubbornness from Biden was 2016. He was dealing with the loss of his son, true, but in order to get the Clinton machine behind him for his own election, Obama had already accepted it would be Hillary’s turn that year, after being his Secretary of State. And it bothered Biden when Obama informed him the support would be behind Hillary, it bothered Biden even more when Hillary lost to Trump as he felt he would have done better, and then Biden took 2020 as vindication of all his prior grievances about 2016. So, when people were trying to nudge him away from running again, in Biden’s mind, they were just more skeptics that he’d already proven wrong.
The next guard of Democratic presidential hopefuls — Whitmer, Shapiro, etc. — didn’t have the clout to push Biden aside on their own, and evidently none wanted to risk dimming their own star by losing an open primary going up against Biden and the money he had already raised from Democratic donors worried about a second Trump term.
The in for those outside Biden’s camp was the early debate and a bad performance, so power brokers from other camps within the party could claim through clenched teeth, of course they still supported Biden, but it was the public and donors had lost faith, and their hands were forced. This is when Pelosi, the Obamas and large donors struck.
As mentioned elsewhere on this topic, Harris was then effective in back room dealings and was able to scuttle a contested convention on the grounds that internal division might harm the chances of defeating Trump, and also, that if Biden withdrew, she was the candidate that would retain access to the money that had been raised for the Biden-Harris ticket.
I suspect if Whitmer and Shapiro could travel back in time, knowing what they now know, they would take their shot in an open primary. Now, there is at least a possibility Harris serves two terms, and who knows how hot their careers will be in eight years, plus Walz’s increased name recognition puts him in the mix.
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