Biden’s Best Bet
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The president is an unpopular Democrat. Facing abysmal poll numbers, bitter divisions within his own party, and declining health, he concludes that running for reelection is not in his personal political interests, nor that of the party. He announces that he will not seek his party’s nomination, which sparks a nomination fight between the uninspiring vice president [representing the administration and Democrat “establishment”] and two Senators who energized the party’s more liberal base. The vice president secures the nomination at the convention in Chicago, essentially through brute force and over the very public objections of liberal activists. The vice president’s campaign never fully recovers from the bad optics of the convention, and goes on to lose the general election to a paranoid Republican who was running again after having lost a previous presidential election [and romped to victory in the primary despite private reservations about his electability].
I’m talking, of course, about 1968. It’s not a perfect analog to 2024, but it’s close enough in some spooky ways to provide some lessons for Democrats. The biggest difference, obviously, is that one of the three candidates running for the Democrats was literally assassinated during the campaign, which affected the race in ways we can’t quantify. But the general contours, I think, translate pretty well. And it’s why I — reluctantly — think Democrats are actually better off trying to drag Joe Biden across the finish line against Donald Trump than try to replace him.
Now, I’ve been saying since it became apparent that 2024 was likely to be a rematch of 2020 that whichever party had the courage to shuffle its elderly leader off the stage and nominate someone under the age of 60 would likely romp to victory in the general election. I’m not sure if that’s literally true, but it sure seems — as Stephen Colbert used to say — truthy. I think it’s most true of Republicans in the sense that Nikki Haley would probably beat Joe Biden by high-single digits [which in the current political climate would be a Reagan ‘84-sized victory]. The problem is that Republicans are least-open to the idea, as evidenced by the fact that Donald Trump is on track to win literally every primary race.
Democrats, meanwhile, are much more open to the idea of replacing their incumbent. The issue for them is that there are even less popular options than Biden in the offing — which don’t necessarily improve Democrats’ electoral chances — and getting to a better candidate on paper requires an ugly process likely to result in hurt/hard feelings.
The obvious next-up should President Biden not run for reelection is Vice President Kamala Harris, who I’ve often referred to as the Billy Beane of American politics. Watching her operate politically is sort of morbidly fascinating to me. As in, how is it possible to be so bad given her attributes? I’m hard-pressed to come up with a politician whose whole is so much less than the sum of their parts. It’s baffling. Nevertheless, Democrats shouldn’t feel much more confident with her at the top of the ticket than Biden. [Though I’m coming around to the idea that Harris could get more popular as it becomes clear to a larger majority of voters that our choices as of now are inevitably Trump and Biden. It’s sort of like closing time at the bar — people are willing to overlook quite a lot when the alternatives are so obviously worse. Which is to say, it’s plausible to me that when voters come to grips with the reality that the choices are the old and slow guy, or the old and also crazy guy, the awkward-but-basically-normal woman doesn’t seem so bad.
Moreover, there is no plausible justification for Harris to simply step aside. “You’ll probably lose” is not a compelling enough argument, I don’t think, to convince the first black woman to lead a presidential ticket that she should stand down. Another candidate would have to pry it from her hands. And who’s going to do that? Gavin Newsom?
Much like Harris, I’m not sure Newsom solves Democrats’ problems. Sure, he’s a young-enough telegenic guy, and he’s been amped to run for president since setting foot in the California governor’s mansion. He might decide that this is his best — and perhaps only — opportunity to become president, even if it means climbing over Kamala Harris like a crab getting out of a bucket. But he’s also a stereotypical California Democrat, unlikely to appeal to the sort of swing state voter that’s decided our presidential elections thus far this century, certainly not after having wrested the nomination from the black woman who had a more plausible claim to it.
If I had my druthers and we could somehow Men in Black memory-flash the electorate into forgetting that Kamala Harris is vice president, I think a ticket of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, in either order, would be a particularly effective duo against Donald Trump. But we don’t live in that universe. [Also, it’s worth noting that if I truly had my druthers, 2024 would be Paul Ryan seeking reelection after a successful first term as president after a successful eight years as vice president. So don’t get me started.]
The point is, barring a series of unlikely [and probably tragic] events, the candidates we’ll have in November are the ones we have today. For Democrats, it’s Biden, or [likely] worse. Republicans have a better option, but they have repeatedly made it clear that they don’t want a better option. The sooner voters accept that reality, the sooner we can start processing precisely what it is we’re voting for this fall.
Blinded by the Fight
I said on Friday that I would probably have more to say about the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, and uh, my mood on the matter has not improved. Former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had this entry, apparently gunning for Best in Show:
After Gingrich and various Trump sycophants had taken to social media to note the [imagined in their fevered brains] similarities between Donald Trump and Alexei Navalny, the man himself waited three days to weigh in on the issue, and, well, yikes:
He reiterated this sentiment during a townhall on Fox News last night, saying:
Well, Navalny, it’s a very sad situation. And he’s very brave, he was a very brave guy because he went back. He could’ve stayed away. And frankly would’ve been a lot better off staying away and talking from outside the country as opposed to having to go back in, because people thought that could happen, and it did happen. And it’s a horrible thing. But it’s happening in our country, too. We are turning into a communist country in many ways. And if you look at it, I’m the leading candidate, I get indicted — I’d never heard of being indicted before — I got indicted four times, I have eight or nine trials, all because of the fact, and you know this, all because of the fact that I’m in politics.
One of my personal failings is a tendency toward contempt. It’s something I’m working on, but it’s difficult when so many people are, well, behaving contemptuously. I just have no patience for people like Gingrich who look at the situations of Alexei Navalny and Donald Trump and conclude “these are similar.” And I have special derision for anyone who looks at a murdered political prisoner and says “this is just like what I’m going through.”
I’m willing to grant that Joe Biden often says things that might indicate a, let’s say, tenuous grasp of reality. But if we accept the premise that Donald Trump isn’t suffering from age-related mental decline, what are we to make of this delusional lunacy?
Many people are incensed that Donald Trump made it through his comments on Navalny without condemning Vladimir Putin for, y’know, facilitating Navalny’s death. But of course Trump doesn’t condemn Putin for Navalny’s death, because he doesn’t morally object to it. He only opposes it to the extent that he feels persecuted himself and can use it as a cudgel against his political opponents. [Given Trump’s obvious affinity for Putin, and despots in general [not to mention his claims of absolute presidential immunity], it’s more likely that he simply wishes he had Putin’s despotic authority.]
Trump and Gingrich are exhibiting the same sort of brain rot that also leads people like Tucker Carlson to fawn over Russian subway stations and grocery stores, or alleged legislators like J.D. Vance and Elise Stefanik to brand those convicted of offenses related to January 6th as “hostages” rather than, y’know, people lawfully convicted of violating criminal statutes.
It really shouldn’t need to be said, but anyone who conflates the behavior of the American federal government with the behavior of Putin’s Russia is anti-American. That used to be almost exclusively the purview of the Cold War-era far left, but it has recently gained purchase on the populist right such that now hardly anyone hates America more than a staunch Trump supporter. These people are so blinded by hate for their political opponents that it spills over to hatred of America.
It’s obviously a slander to compare Putin’s Russia to America — even “Biden’s America,” which is a dubious contention in itself because America is not the sort of country who takes on its president’s persona — but we can tell it’s a slander because nothing happens to anyone who makes such a comparison. There’s an entire cottage industry — or in some cases, entire cable news channels — dedicated to the idea that Joe Biden is a tyrant who seeks to imprison and/or kill his opposition, and yet not one of these people has come into contact with Cold War-era nerve agents, or suffered an implausible accident involving a window, gunned down in broad daylight by loyalist goons, or shipped to remote prisons to be tortured and starved to death. What’s worse is that the people saying it don’t even believe it. They know full well that criticizing “the Biden regime” poses no risk to them personally, and in fact can be quite lucrative.
Again, it’s lunacy. And anti-American lunacy at that. Say what you will about the various prosecutions of Donald Trump — I think Alvin Bragg’s case in New York is by-far the weakest and I probably wouldn’t have brought it, but I’m not the Manhattan District Attorney and no one asked me. The other three criminal cases are perfectly reasonable to me, as are the defamation and bank fraud civil cases in New York. We can quibble about the prudence of prosecuting a former president and presidential candidate during a campaign, but no one argues that Donald Trump didn’t engage in the behavior in question. Which is to say, these are not trumped-up charges, so to speak. Even if you grant that Alvin Bragg is an overzealous prosecutor, a single overzealous prosecutor in one district does not make America despotic.
Hundreds of Russians have been arrested since Navalny’s death for placing flowers at makeshift memorials that have sprung up across the country. That’s another way in which America is different than Russia. Actual patriotic Russians recognize Navalny’s unquestionable bravery in literally sacrificing himself for the cause of Russian liberty, and they are willing to risk their own safety to pay their respects. No one is going to do such a thing when these schmucks prattling on about the “Biden Crime Family” shuffle off this mortal coil, if their passing goes remarked upon at all, because there’s no bravery, sacrifice, or risk of persecution in doing so. Their shtick is just make-believe for people who can’t comprehend actual courage.
Occasional Trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: Bodies of Water
Clue: This river rises in the Black Forest and flows easterly about 1,770 miles, where it empties into the Black Sea.
The Danube
Today’s clue:
Category: Artists
Clue: In 1889, he completed his “Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear And Pipe.”
Dispatches from the Homefront
Sort of a weird Friday night for me and the family. My wife and I were sitting on the couch watching TV around 8:30 when the whole house jolts like a bomb went off.
“The hell was that?” I said, somewhat alarmedly. The jolt was so intense that it seemed plausible that someone had driven a car into our house, so I looked out the front door but didn’t see anything. The next most plausible explanation was that a tree had fallen on the roof, so I ran upstairs and checked my daughters’ rooms, but there was nothing unusual. The younger one was already asleep, and the older one was still playing with her dolls in bed.
“Everything ok in here?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “What was that big bump?” she asked.
“Uh, we’re not sure, but we’re trying to figure it out.”
“Well it wasn’t me!” she insists.
At this point I think “Well did someone drive a car into the neighbors’ house?” So I go look out the upstairs window, at which point I see everyone on my street standing outside their houses, confused as I am. I go outside and say to no one in particular “So, we all heard that right?” Everyone agrees. “Any idea what it was?” No one is sure. “Maybe a gas line explosion?” one of my neighbors offers. I start trying to figure out what explosion would be big enough to rattle an entire neighborhood out of their houses — a plane crash? A meteor blowing up in the atmosphere? Some sort of missile?
Given that there weren’t air raid sirens, news alerts, or work calling my phone, I was reasonably certain we weren’t at war. But then every emergency vehicle in the county raced by with their sirens blaring. So I did what I always do in these sorts of situations — I searched Twitter. Apparently the blast was felt all the way across the river into Maryland, which made it all the more unsettling. But eventually the story began to take shape — police and fire scanners picked up multiple mayday calls from firefighters in my area, and all available units were heading to an address in the next subdivision over, on the route I jog during the summer [or walk my dog when I’m looking to wear him out]. Then reports start getting darker — mentions of firefighters trapped, possibly dead. A house completely leveled. Someone in the neighborhood took a video that looks like it came from a battlefield.
It turns out to have been a 500-gallon buried propane tank that began leaking and later exploded. One firefighter was killed, nine more were injured, four severely. Somewhat miraculously, the two people living in the home were able to evacuate with their pets before the explosion, but it’s nevertheless a tragic scene. Fundraisers have been set up for the firefighter’s family, as well as for the two women who lost all of their worldly possessions.
One thing I noticed when trying to piece together snippets of information from Twitter was just how quickly conspiracists jump onto these sorts of events, looking for some nefarious explanation. It’s easier for them to consider, I guess, than the fact that sometimes bad things just happen to innocent people.