Dems: Take A Breath

The Onion headline writes itself: Democrats Replace Candidate Sure to Lose With Candidate Pretty Sure to Lose.

Now that Joe Biden has — at long last — dropped out of the race, the Democrats should not rush to select his replacement on the ticket. They’ve got almost four weeks before their convention and they should take that time to get it right.

Not getting it right would be to nominate Kamala Harris. Any Democrat can’t win the presidency without winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Harris is not the best positioned candidate to do that. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would be obvious better choices. Other good picks might include Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and former South Bend mayor and Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg. As of this writing, Whitmer and Shapiro have already thrown their support behind Harris. Pressure seems to be growing to unite behind Harris without further vetting. It’s looking like the Democrats will exchange one certainly unelectable candidate for a likely unelectable candidate.

Harris’ liabilities are substantial. Her approval numbers have been pretty much the same as Biden’s for three years, which is to say low. All of the arguments the Republicans had keyed up for Biden — inflation, immigration, etc. — will now be transferred to Harris. You will be hearing a lot about the “Harris/Biden” administration as if their roles were reversed. She failed to catch fire when she ran for president in 2020. And she’s from California. Every bad thing about that state — taxes, homelessness, out-migration — will be laid at her doorstep. Gavin Newsom will be wondering what job he’s had for the last few years. Republicans will also have a credible argument that Harris participated in the staff cover-up that hid Biden’s failing health from the public.

Also, the winning formula for Democrats has been to nominate low key moderates, like Tony Evers and Biden in 2020, though he moved left once he took office, making him far less popular. As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn wrote this morning, “Many Democrats have coalesced behind Ms. Harris, but she doesn’t start the campaign as the kind of broadly acceptable candidate Democrats have put forward to great success during the Trump era.”

Cohn goes on to write: “A majority of voters have long had an unfavorable view of her. She has trailed Mr. Trump in nearly every national and battleground state poll conducted so far this year. In the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll of Pennsylvania, just 42 percent of likely voters said they viewed Ms. Harris favorably — well short of the 51 percent who had a favorable view of Mr. Biden in the state ahead of the 2020 election. It’s even lower than the 46 percent who said the same for Mr. Trump in the recent poll. With numbers like these, a Harris-Trump matchup doesn’t look much like the 2020 presidential election, when Mr. Biden prevailed as a moderate candidate who was liked by a majority of voters.” 

Look, this is pretty straightforward. The goal is to beat Trump. To do that Democrats have to win Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. (As for that last state, Harris opposes fracking, which puts her at a deep disadvantage there from the start.) There are at least five candidates better positioned to do that than Harris.

The basic argument for Harris is that she’s next in line and she’s a Black woman. Some party leaders don’t want a contest in Chicago or even before they get there. They remember 1968, also in Chicago. But 1968 was all about the war in Vietnam. This is all about simply picking the best candidate to beat the most awful man ever to occupy the White House. It’s not a moral issue, it’s a practical political one.

And, yes, Harris checks a couple of identity boxes and that’s important (way too important) in the Democratic Party these days. But do you want a presidential candidate who is a Black woman or do you want a president who has policies that are good for Black women?

So, the argument for Harris essentially goes like this: let’s nominate someone less likely to win than several other options just so we can avoid a contest and feel good about ourselves. Would my party rather go into the fall united behind a losing candidate or spend a couple of weeks of angst in order to pick someone with a better chance and then unite behind that candidate?