After yesterday’s diatribe of doom that sent me down yet another political rabbithole, I was all set to muse about how a marginally reviewed reboot of nearly 30-year-old IP managed to become the latest box office savior of the summer (Spoiler alert: per DEADLINE’s Anthony D’Alessandro, TWISTERS pulled off that feat by eschewing almost all direct references to the 1996 “original” without the second S and by appealing to fans in flyover states to whom this may have appeared to be more like a real-life documentary). That was before a far bigger storm hit the newswires shortly after lunch Eastern time. As BUSINESS INSIDER’s quintet of Joshua Nelken-Zitser,Sarah Gray,John L. Dorman,Hannah Getahun and Aditi Bharade (nice to see SOME news outlet still employing that many human journalists!) reported:
After weeks of mounting pressure, President Joe Biden announced Sunday he would drop out of the presidential race.
The Democrats now only have a few weeks to rally behind a new nominee, who will go on to face former President Donald Trump in November.
Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris places her as a frontrunner, though it’s uncertain if any other potential candidates will choose to challenge her. Harris accepted Biden’s endorsement on Sunday evening.
And aside from a slew of cut-and-pastes of tweets from elected representatives all throwing their universal support behind Harris, that’s what the combined efforts of five paid journalists produces for a major publication these days.
So indeed for the first time since the tumultuous year of 1968 a sitting president has opted not to seek a second term due to mounting dissent and the uncomfortable truth that he had lost the faith of both his party and a plurality of the voters he would need to win an election. And, almost eerily, the parallels between 1968 and 2024 are numerous:
— The Democratic convention site is Chicago.
— The Republican candidate is someone who once held an elected national office and previously lost a close, controversial bid for the Presidency.
— A candidate named Robert F. Kennedy is a factor.
— And a wisecracking comedian is being viewed by millions on television and winning over many without much of his own agenda.
OK, Pat Paulsen was a joke candidate, not the one who is leading all objective polls just over 100 days before the election. But you get the point.
Yesterday’s news cycle of immediacy and reactivity was off the charts even for times as insane as the last three and a half weeks have been. Within minutes of Biden’s initial announcement came a loud hue and cry that Harris had not yet been endorsed, the likes of Ryan Grim of DROP SITE NEWS had already sent out a newsletter with this screaming plea:
Biden is out. Here’s the case for an open convention.
The president declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in his letter announcing his departure from the race. Here’s why that’s good — even for her.
The Biden camp–which, by many accounts, was effectively Joe, Jill and Hunter–hastily corrected this, and as the day wore on it appeared that in spite of the strong points folks like Grim made to allow Harris the chance to, as she said in her own words, “earn and win this nomination”, more and more potential qualified candidates have elected–or, perhaps, been privately threatened–not to challenge Harris. The party appears yet again to be heeding the sage advice of South Carolina’s kingmaker Jim Clyburn–the same dealmaker that threw his state and the African-American vote to Biden during the 2020 primaries and was repaid by the party by switching the order of primary states to move the Gamecock State into leadoff position, all but assuring Biden none of the early losses or question marks that arose in 2020 and tee up the virtually unchallenged cakewalk to the nearly 4000 delegates he won that are now up for grabs. As POLITICO’s Mia McCarthy reported yesterday:
Clyburn warned against an open convention, citing previous years where an open convention led to a failed presidential run. He specifically cited President Lyndon B. Johnson, who left the 1968 race because of criticism for the Vietnam War. After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and a chaotic convention, the Democrats eventually nominated Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, but he lost to Republican Richard M. Nixon.
“If you go to the convention, having an open process in the convention, it will come out the same way it came out in 1968, 1972, and 1980,” Clyburn said, citing three presidential elections that Democrats lost. “And all of us know what happened in 1968 when we ran Lyndon Johnson out of the race.”
Clyburn added, “They got rid of him over one issue. The Vietnam War. Here we are now using one issue to get rid of a president. The result will be the same.”
I beg to differ, Mr. Clyburn. 1968 was the first year I followed the Presidential election process. My teacher was a proud Negro (his word, not mine, remember the era) of Caribbean descent who insisted we study what had just transpired in Chicago and the open convention that produced Hubert H. Humphrey as the Democratic candidate. And there was much more going on than merely the war that produced the eventual Nixon win.
Do remember that Humphrey was anointed by LBJ as his running mate at a time when the Vice Presidency was vacant. He edged out his fellow Minnesota senator, the more liberal-leaning Eugene Mccarthy, as well as Connecticut’s Thomas Dodd, for much the same reason JFK chose Texas’ Johnson to round out his ticket: geography. By going with the genial, warm-faced Humphrey and his Walden Pond-like deliveries (comedians of the era had a field day every time he said he was as “pleased as punch” to be somewhere), Johnson was easily able to defeat the more incideniary Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Humphrey was already facing more of an uphill battle than will Harris because of the presence of a truly impactful third party candidate in George Wallace. Wallace, of course, was most infamous for his racially divisive governing of Alabama, and was at the time seen as much of an existential threat to Negros as Trump is being seem to POCs of today. My teacher made sure we all knew this, whether we were old enough to hear it or not. But much as Trump is held in reverence by an uncomfortably significant amount of the population who is buying into the myth of “migrant crime”, Wallace was indeed popular with many so-called Dixiecrats, the same geographic bloc from which Johnson’s popularity emerged.
Humphrey’s potentially fatal flaw was his choice of Maine’s Ed Muskie as his running mate. Aside from the misstep in thinking that filling the New England void let by the demise of the two Kennedys would be just as effective from a far less significant state, it left the door open for Southerners to galvanize around one of their own. And the actual results of the 1968 election bear out exactly how much this mattered, as Wikipedia reminds:
Humphrey lost the popular vote by less than one percent, with 43.4% for Nixon (31,783,783 votes) to 42.7% (31,271,839) for Humphrey, and 13.5% (9,901,118) for Wallace. Humphrey carried just 13 states and the District of Columbia with 191 electoral college votes, Nixon carried 32 states and 301 electoral votes, and Wallace carried five states and 46 electoral votes.
Without Wallace’s presence, Humphrey emerges as the people’s choice, and aside from the states Wallace won a binary-choice election perhaps produces enough shifts in purplish states to deny Nixon the electoral cakewalk he had.
So no, an open convention wasn’t necessary the fatal blow that the likes of Clyburn would seem to believe. And the fact that Harris has yet to win a primary, let alone a national election, on her own certainly works to her disadavantage, and indeed denies her the chance to actually EARN the nomination as she has proferred she will. The Republicans are already pummeling media with this message.
And anyone who is out there saying that Harris can’t possibly be passed over because “it’s her turn”, both in terms of being a heartbeat away from the presidency as well as the demographic tick marks she checks off, should be shot down as quickly as possible. Were that true in 2016, Hilary Clinton would have been going against someone like John McCain or Jeb Bush. The Republican party ultimately listened to their voters and through a shockingly conclusive primary season ultimately emerged with the most unlikely of candidates that returned the White House to their party. So please, for once, spare the pearl-clutching and the reparation-like arguments that it would tick off the consistuencies that Clyburn lords over. There simply are not enough Black female progressives in the country to make enough of a statistical impact to use that argument.
Trump’s–or, more to the point–his handlers’ choice of J.D. Vance as running mate was based as much on his geographic counterbalance to the ticket as well as his youth and the Peter Thiel war chest he brought. If indeed Harris is going to be anointed ahead of the 2024 convention, her running mate choice will need to reflect this statistical reality to the same extent. Gretchen Witmer and Josh Shapiro provide obvious connections to crucial battleground states not reflecting the coastal elite core that is already taking a victory lap for Harris. But both carry potential baggage of their own for reasons that perhaps shouldn’t be true but are. Would America be ready for a two-female ticket? Would America finally be ready for a ticket including a Jewish VP (it wasn’t in 2000)?
And please don’t say that Trump, Vance and their zealots wouldn’t play the kind cards. Not to mention the fact that Vance is married to a San Francisco-based lawyer of Indian descent himself. There is more than enough dirt on Harris’ history in those firms, and how she rose to prominence in the first place than I am more than certain has or could trickle down to Usha. Don’t put past them using Willie Brown in the same manner than George Bush used Willie Horton.
All of a sudden, the likes of a Joe Manchin, who hails from the same coal and rust belt region that Vance does, whom this morning silenced those believing he might mount a challenge to Harris by declaring otherwise, isn’t such an outlandish consideration.
And Harris more than likely is not going to get the chance to debate Trump one-on-one in the same room. Trump himself knows she’s a more formidable foe than even a stronger, competent version of Biden and is terrified of being exposed as anything less than the gladiator he is now being seen as.
But the running mate choice might get that chance to debate Vance, who needs to establish his own street cred for the long term. There would be nothing stopping Harris from providing the playbook and talking points. She’s an experienced prosecutor who is facing a convincted felon. She could even fact-check any such debate in real time, in effect being the coach in the headset while the quarterback goes onto the field. This is supposedly her strength. And would be a darn good way for her to earn her stripes even as the party appears hell-bent to deny her the route of an open convention to do so.
So now the likes of George Clooney, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have the scenario they craved. And the money seems to be rolling in–per many reports, yesterday alone saw a $50 million windfall of contributions from relieved voters and donors. Make damn good use of it. For G-d’s sake, do some actual, credible third party research to help Harris find the right combination of geographic and platform impact for a running mate, and don’t just default to the same old tired argument of demographic tick marks. As the NEW YORK TIMES’ Nate Cohn warned in his TILT newsletter this morning:
In fairness to Ms. Harris, it would be challenging for any Democrat today to advance a clear agenda for the future. Mr. Biden struggled to do so in his re-election campaign. The party has held power for almost 12 of the last 16 years, and it has exhausted much of its agenda; there aren’t many popular, liberal policies left in the cupboard. As long as voters remain dissatisfied with the status quo and the Democratic nominee, a campaign to defend the system might not be the slam dunk Democrats once thought it was.
I, for one, would be as pleased as punch if for once those steering this oceanliner through stormy seas might just heed such advice.
Until next time…