With Election Day a scant four months away, Democrats and their party are coming to the realization that they got what they asked for, not what they wanted.
During a 2024 primary election cycle tilted heavily in favor of incumbent President Joe Biden, efforts were taken by the party and within the media to marginalize other Democrats running for the nomination, seeking to convey the appearance of overwhelming support for Biden. Hence, he and Vice President Kamala Harris are the presumptive nominees of their party. All of this is quite normal; this is what the party and its primary voters asked for. It’s what millions of Democrats in all 50 states and US territories voted for.
But minutes after the June 27 presidential debate started, Democrats found themselves facing a nightmarish predicament, one that eclipses any other in the modern era of the presidency. Time is running short for the party to solve their problems, and none of their options are good. But before getting entangled in the machinations of Democrat Party politics, it’s helpful to take a step back and simplify things.
Democrats are in a panic because they chose a bad candidate. Set aside for a moment the reasons Joe Biden is a bad candidate; many Democrats today, and a majority of their establishment media allies, believe Biden cannot win in November. Because Biden is a bad candidate, they want to replace him with someone else. That is the simplest way to describe the current state of play.
How the Democrat Party accomplishes this replacement has become the most popular parlor game in Washington, DC and other places where political junkies gather. But underlying this is the ironic truth that a party calling itself democratic is now forced to use decidedly un-democratic means to remove the bad candidate they chose to be at the top of the ticket.
Whatever Democrats do, and however they do it, will necessarily disenfranchise millions of voters - the base of their own party - who participated in primary elections earlier this year to democratically elect their nominees for president and vice president, and they did this in good faith. Instead, the nominees will be hand selected by a small cabal of Democrat shamans in what may be the biggest, smokiest backroom in American political history.
This creates a Hydra-like situation; any option that solves one problem creates at least one new one. Suppose President Biden decides to stay in the race. That solves the problem of disenfranchising Democrats who voted in the primary, and avoids a very messy convention later this summer. But it leaves the party with a bad nominee who is likely to get worse over time. Biden could voluntarily step aside, which solves the problem of one bad presidential candidate, but it creates the chaos and drama of intra-party fratricide to determine who will lead the party in the November election and disenfranchises Democrat primary voters.
An additional problem created by Biden deciding to bow out of the race would be the inevitable demands that he resign from office altogether. He cannot simply leave the race without saying why and everybody knows what that reason is. If he’s not fit to run for a second term as president, how can he be fit to complete his first? It’s not partisan hackery to ask that question. It’s already being asked by Democrat loyalists and some media.
Should Biden resign, Kamala Harris would assume the presidency, making her America’s first unelected, partly black woman president. This would certainly make Harris the presumptive presidential nominee, but that would have to be settled at the convention and there’s no guarantee she wouldn’t face a challenge in Chicago.
It also brings Democrats back to their original problem of having a bad candidate leading the ticket. If you want to know what kind of candidate Harris would be, consider her campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination. She was forced to drop-out of the contest two months before the Iowa Caucuses because almost nobody liked her enough to vote for her. Four-plus years later, the vice president is burdened by what has been, and the great significance to the passage of time in terms of what she needs to do this time, and to work together as she continues to work, and that time is every day.
I can think of no word that adequately describes what Democrats have made of their party and the 2024 presidential election. Call it a debacle, a morass, a catastrophe, or anything you wish, it would not be hyperbole. Democrats got what they asked for, but it’s not what they wanted. The party has wrapped itself into a Gordian knot and if anyone can untie it, they may indeed be destined to govern. Buckle up - the fat lady isn’t nearly ready to sing.