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GELFAND’S WORLD - On Sunday morning, we were still obsessed with the Biden question: Will he or won't he?" Then things changed with Biden's announcement that he was withdrawing from the race. By early Sunday afternoon, your humble correspondent here was speculating as to how the Democratic Party nomination would play out. At the time, it seemed to me that Kamala Harris would float to the top of the tank, not necessarily because she is the best possible president, but because she is adequate and time is running out. I typed up a couple of paragraphs suggesting that the Democrats ought to coalesce around the Harris candidacy because any sort of convention fight would be a return to 1968 and the likely return of the Trump presidency.
I read a few comments online, the kind you would expect from dyed in the wool anti-Trumpers who shared a little group paranoia over the way things were rolling out. There were fears that this was some sort of conspiracy to deny Kamala Harris her rightful place. It seemed strange to me, but there were a few angry comments from Biden supporters who threatened to stay home on election day.
Then I went to a play, which took a few hours.
By the time I got home around 10 PM, it was already over. Those who were threatening to sit out the election? By midnight they were agreeing to vote for Harris and to oppose Trump no matter what. The congressional Democrats who had been keeping mum? They were flocking to Harris. There was some speculation due to Barack Obama's failure to endorse Harris immediately -- was a Michelle Obama candidacy in the making? -- but none of this broke the momentum of the newly hatched Harris for President movement. One Biden delegation had already met and pledged its votes to Harris.
A few Republican voices have already found a cause: Their candidate was nominated through action of the primary voters, they point out, whereas Kamala Harris will become the Democratic nominee without ever having participated in a primary. To borrow the old phrase, it's true but irrelevant. We have only to consider the 2020 Biden nomination to see the parallels.
In 2020, with much of the nation desperate for relief from the Trump presidency, we had many candidates. In the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Joe Biden was down the list. If you look at the results, which are available on Wikipedia and elsewhere, you will be reminded that Biden finished fourth to Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren in the caucuses, then fifth place in New Hampshire (Klobuchar snuck in at fourth). Joe did a little better in Nevada, finishing in second place, but losing to Sanders by a more than 2:1 margin.
It was not until South Carolina and the help of an influential congressman that Joe finally won a primary. He then won in Alabama. In brief, Biden began to build his momentum in states that were never going to deliver an Electoral vote to a Democrat. Biden even lost both California and Colorado to Sanders.
But the mass of voters were obviously searching for a middle of the road candidate who could beat Donald Trump, and for the rest of the primary season, Biden was that man. (Everybody liked Bernie, but feared that he would lose badly in middle America.)
What I'm trying to point out here is that Joe Biden was as much an anointed candidate as you are likely to find. Nobody much cared about his record in the Senate, nor did people seem to care very much about what he was promising. They just cared that he was the tool to get rid of the Trump presidency. It was a matter of timing. The anti-Trump voters needed a name to coalesce around so there could be unity in the fight, and Biden was at the right place at the right time. He understood that he was that candidate.
This is now Kamala Harris' job. Point out what's undesirable about reelecting Trump, get out reasonably quick responses to the Trump lies, and pledge to maintain the economic recovery. She will have to answer for gas and food prices, and she will have to respond at some level to Trump's ranting about the border.
Paul Campos weighs in
Paul Campos is a law professor who has been calling for Biden to withdraw from the race for some time. His evaluation of the latest events is telling:
"Today is an absolute disaster for Donald Trump and the Republican party. The fear and panic that Biden’s decision to withdraw and endorse Harris has inspired can be seen in such things as Mike Johnson’s genuinely insane suggestion that lawsuits might force Joe Biden to be the Democratic party’s nominee, even in the wake of his decision not to run. To call that argument frivolous is an insult to frivolity. Any halfway decent judge should visit severe professional sanctions on any licensed attorney who should have the temerity to argue such a thing before a court.
"Kamala Harris is Donald Trump’s worst nightmare. Prepare for a wave of misogyny, innuendo, and attempted slut shaming that will make the 2016 election look like a garden party. It will be disgusting beyond belief, but I also believe it will backfire spectacularly, with an electorate already primed by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to understand the threat Trump and Trumpism represent to the idea of treating women like equal citizens."
I hope that Campos is right.
One last thought
Some years ago, I was at a biology conference in Washington, D.C. I shared a cab to the airport with a scientist from mainland China, who asked me an interesting question. Paraphrasing his inquiry here, he asked what it was about George Washington that caused us to elevate him as our greatest leader. I thought about the answer for a moment and pulled out what I had been taught in school years earlier. "Because he gave up power." It was Washington who resigned as general after the revolution and who established the two-term limit to presidencies as an American standard. When offered the crown, he declined. Biden may be remembered for his own act of patriotism and self control.
We are in for interesting times in the next three months, but there is reason for optimism.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
