Perceptions of the Democratic Campaign to Nominate a Presidential Candidate

Musings

The Democrats nominate their presidential candidate at their convention. Their convention is slated to start on August 19th. They are over five weeks out from that date. Presumably they are embarked in a expensive, well directed campaign to nominate two democratic candidates for president and vice president and promote their other down ballot candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the various state offices. There is some activity on the down ballot issues but not too much. There is an excess of activity on the presidential nomination.

Of recent years the parties have always been interested in trying to avoid any true primary contests so that they could promote a consensus candidate and save their money for the general election. In doing that they have staged the primaries to basically give one candidate the nomination and move on towards the general election. The Democrats are now five weeks out from their convention and have no idea of what to do or how they got where they are.

Joe Biden wanted to run for reelection and since he was the sitting president the party lined up behind him and structured the campaign so that he would move into that slot. The clearest example of this was when the Democrats decided not to start their campaign in Iowa at the caucuses but instead moved it to a primary in South Carolina. The Democrats were afraid that Biden may be embarrassed in the Iowa caucuses and the subsequent primaries and scuttle his nomination in those early contests. That is exactly what happened in 2008 when Barack Obama, a first term senator from Illinois who had not even finished his first term, was able to step forward and bounce the parties alleged "consensus candidate" Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses and proceeded to defeat her consistently in the primaries thereafter. To avoid that the democratic national committee readjusted their early contests to replace Iowa and move the South Carolina primary up as the first contest. That was done at the request of Joe Biden as he had some strong supporters in South Carolina amongst black voters. Under the pretense of that South Carolina was more representative of the national electorate it's primary was moved ahead of Iowa. This was just a setup. South Carolina had not voted for a democratic presidential candidate in the general election in a number of years and showed no inclination to do that in 2024. This was just a way to allow Joe Biden to win a primary to open the voting season and give his campaign that boost.

Successively Joe Biden was able to push any other democratic candidates aside and roll up primary votes as the spring ended and the Democrats looked forward to their convention in August. However, the egos of Joe Biden, the White House staff and the democratic party forgot to contemplate that all this was early in the process and they overstepped themselves. Joe Biden even signed an agreement to debate Donald Trump in June when neither one of them would be a nominated candidate. Both candidates were unpopular, both were too old to be running for president and the Democrats forgot to contemplate that they could have a misstep. In the debate

Joe Biden had a serious misstep. He did not perform well. Many perceived him as too old and that is how he performed. That sunk his approval ratings.

Contemplations

Joe Biden now finds himself in the position that many of the voters who were dubious of both he and Donald Trump have now seen Joe Biden perform poorly on a debate stage. Joe wants everyone to understand that was just a bad night and he will really do much better in the future. However, that is a hard case to sell when you're 81 years old already and the population that has to vote on you is already dubious of your ability. Joe confirmed their perception. They were also dubious of Trump's ability, but as incoherent as Trump's answers were he did not stumble as bad as Joe Biden in the debate.

The end result is that the Biden campaign chose this debate and now they have to live with the result. The result is that many people including Democrats that supported Joe Biden are suggesting that he drop his campaign and someone else replace him. Joe Biden and his entourage are spending a great deal of time trying to downplay that position and arguing a number of senseless excuses, such as Joe had a difficult schedule the week before, Joe had a cold, Joe needs to rest more from all of his activities as president. It does not make sense that Joe Biden couldn't be prepared for a debate with someone as incomprehensible as Donald Trump but will perform well for the next four years until he is 85!

The end result of this is that instead of the Democrats spending their time and money on a strong marketing campaign to attack Donald Trump and his campaign and age ( and there never seems to have been an easier candidate to attack), Joe Biden and the democrats are spending their time trying to suggest that Joe Biden is fine and is the right candidate. They are not spending their time and money promoting their platform and the democratic candidates. This is exactly the strategy that the republicans want to achieve. Send the opposition off in the wrong direction.

This is a dilemma that does not have an answer in the form of Joe Biden's "continue as before." Joe Biden should step aside. But how do the Democrats go about replacing him. If Joe won't step aside the Democrats have an incurable problem and just have to hope some other unexpected events allow them to move ahead of Donald Trump in the election contest. If Joe's ego won't let him step aside it will be a serious problem as the Democrats are likely to self destruct squabbling with themselves while Donald Trump becomes president. Hopefully someone is explaining that to Joe Biden.

If Joe Biden agrees to step aside a number of ideas have been proposed.

One is to simply line up behind Kamala Harris. As the vice president there is a logic to that and she has earned it. However, I am dubious of that logic. Regardless of how well Kamilla served as vice president she is closely associated with the Biden white house and if the Democrats are trying to attract those voters in the middle and the 10 to 15% of Republicans that did not vote for Trump

in the republican primaries but voted for Nikki Haley, then they must present a candidate that does not look closely tied to the Biden white house and its policies. Further, since both candidates appeared to only have support and approximately the low to mid 40s of the voting population before the debates it would seem clear that the Democrats have to go after the independent voters in the middle and the disgruntled Republicans if they expect to win. That's why I don't believe Kamala is the right choice.

There is also the idea of holding a quick primary. I am dubious of that as the last set of open primaries between the Democrats and the Republicans simply showed many people jumping into the pot most of whom received little support but offered significant distraction. To declare, organize and hold those primaries in 5 weeks seems dubious. They would certainly get a lot of press attention but their results are likely to have more problems than the desired outcome.

There is also the issue that all of the Democrats' scrambling around to decide what to do and replace Joe Biden will give the republican campaign additional ammunition to simply gloat over how Trump chased Biden out of the campaign. The Democrats have find a way to resolve this issue without everyone talking to everyone else and especially all of the reporters creating multiple stories about the replacement of Joe Biden every day in the news.

With so little time and no good options it seems to me that a consortium of the top Democrats have to find a way to communicate with each other and find one or perhaps two or three candidates to present at the convention. The problem is all politicians seem to have the need to talk too much. As soon as they know something they run and tell someone else and they have to tell their favorite reporter, who of course swears secrecy but then somehow all these things leak out. That type of situation is very damaging to the Democrats it suggests they were just running around not knowing what to do.

As the Democrats look through their potential candidates for a national campaign who have shown serious potential they need to reduce those individuals to a few people and structure the end result for a vote at the convention.

Thoughts

I believe that many of the leading democratic candidates to replace Joe Biden should not be considered because they will have a more difficult time bringing in the votes from the independents and the disgruntled Republicans. The Democrats cannot just nominate a new Biden team with a different person on top. They have to have a more conservative and middle of the road appeal. That eliminates some excellent candidates like Kamala Harris. I believe that also eliminates any democratic candidate from the Northeast or the West Coast which simply by their geography will be perceived as liberal candidates. Further I believe the party needs a female at the head of the ticket. I am also dubious of someone who is either a senator or a member of the House of Representatives. Those two branches of Congress are perceived to have a dismal record over the last four years. It is not their failure to make those efforts but it is the fact that Congress is split

approximately 50/50 and as the Democrats tried to take actions they were constantly stymied by the Republicans. Therefore I do not believe there are any members of the Congress that have a strong background too be nominated. It isn't their effort or attempts it's the result that Congress produces. Further, I understand that early in Biden's presidency some number of bills got passed to fight the inflation and pandemic and had some bipartisan support, however I don't believe the public has much of a memory of those results. The Biden white house keeps trying to remind everybody of those results but I believe the national polling shows that hardly anyone is paying attention to those first years of his administration.

The way I categorize the democrats candidates that leaves the Democrats with very few choices as they contemplate who they might nominate to at the democratic convention. A female governor, who has a strong campaigning record who can give a perception of being a strong voice with some conservative appeal and can carry a number of centrist voters.

Silence Dogood

The previous versions of this blog that have been posted can be found at: Thoughtscm.com