What Are Democrats to Do?
Musings
A debate occurred last week between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This was a silly event except to the CNN network and the two individuals who each had enough ego to feel that they could out talk to the other one and therefore they were willing to engage in a debate that had no meaning for informing the nations electorate. Both of these individuals have been president and were know politicians.
The commentary that has come out of the debate seems to be that the two parties continue to hold their same views but Joe Biden lost his train of thought on more than one occasion and did not present well. This is blamed on his age. Since Joe Biden is 81 and Donald Trump is 78 it is easy to blame the stumbles that each of them had in the debate and have had in prior appearances on age. They are both too old to be running for president and too old to be president.
I doubt the debate changed many people's view as to who to vote for. Even if you think Joe Biden is too old, or not a very good president, or public speaker the alternative is Trump who has long been a negative voice and force in American politics. Now he seems to be taking it to the final extreme. What is interesting is that there is still a fairly large percentage of the population who anticipate voting for Trump. Most of them will profess that they don't really like him that well there's just no one else for whom to vote. That is the dilemma created by the Democratic Party. The Democrats allowed themselves to get set up in this position. They did this once before in 2016 in the Trump versus Clinton campaign and now they are back in this position again where people who don't want to vote for Trump don't have one anyone else for whom they are willing to vote.
This dilemma became much more apparent for Democrats as they watched Biden's performance in the debate. If Joe Biden is going to act and perform that way for the rest of the campaign, as well as four more years as a president, it is doubtful that the Democrats want him as a candidate.
Contemplations
Many people voted for Joe Biden and wanted him to become president in 2020 because they thought he was a better candidate than Trump and in effect wanted anybody but Trump. Given Biden's age, and the fact that he had been a Washington politician for over 50 years, I doubt many people, when they voted for him in 2020, thought in terms of having a repeat in 2024 so he could become a two term president. However, as is usually the case with politicians Joe's ego told him that he was still in top shape physically and mentally and he wanted to continue as president. This is not a surprise. Joe Biden has been running for office in Washington since the early 1970s.It's the only thing he knows and the only thing which he sees himself doing.
It is surprising that some Democrats did not talk Joe out of running for a second term while he was in his first term. Of course Joe Biden would not think they were correct but it doesn't seem that enough Democrats were willing to step forward to make the case for Joe to step down. In the usual context of yes persons, everyone around Joe Biden kept telling him he's doing a great job and yes he can run again.
Many of the people in Washington want to credit Joe Biden with having done a great job and producing legislative action however, that is a Washington DC analysis. It does carry much weight in the country. Joe mostly presents himself as someone who likes to work with other people to come up with compromises to produce results. In that regard he often seems hesitant to make a decision and produce a result. In Ukraine he keeps putting constraints on what the Ukrainians can do with the American weapons that we give them to fight against the Russians. In the Israeli war he has sent dozens of warnings to Israel to quit destroying Gaza and the Palestinian population. He has been ignored on his warnings and each new one sounds as if it was the same as the last one. He has failed to take steps which can be perceived as fixing the border dilemma. He blames congress. Most recently he has come up with some formulaic statement of how he is reducing the inflow of immigrants at the border. When I read the statement in the newspaper about his "closing of the border" I was dumbfounded. I doubt that even 10% of the population in the United States thinks he has done anything to close or control the border.
Joe Biden is a politician of the 1st order in terms of operating in Washington DC for the last 50 years. Those who are operating in the capital and following it closely can tract most of that activity, the rest of the population cannot. Joe is not perceived as having a forceful character. He is perceived as negotiating to seek some kind of result. On a broad scale Joe is in a category of a Washington politician who has been there over 50 years, spends money and caused inflation, and is having trouble espousing Democratic positions and his views in a debate because he is too old.
The Democrats can either search for a new candidate, which would probably be the smartest thing they could do, or they can try to rally round Joe Biden and boost him so that he can give the perception to the population of a strong president who will defend the basic structure of our democracy and support our allies. The key facet of this is not to keep emphasizing Joe but to praise and promote a Democratic platform that can appeal across the board to the population to elect Democratic candidates to local, state and congressional offices and the office of the president. If it is left a Biden versus Trump campaign it will be subject to more and more questions of which of these two men that are too old to be running, will make what gaffes, or become subject to what illnesses as they move forward in the next 4 months.
If the Democrats are going to stay with Biden they must hurry up and formulate a campaign that brings forth a number of their other leading personas and produces some excellent marketing materials to identify the differences between themselves and the person and program that Trump promotes. This is not a question of Democrats versus Republicans is a question of showing Trump for what he is and convince people they don't want to vote for him.
It is important to remember that in the last election Biden won by 7 million votes it was not a huge percentage victory. There must be a platform that will attract those independents who don't wish to be Democrats but don't want Trump to be elected and that 10 to 15% of the Republican Party that regularly voted in Nikki Haley's campaign who don't want Donald Trump to be president. They need to believe that the alternative will be a worthwhile program if they are to switch from
voting for Donald Trump and indeed to show up and vote at all. It must be remembered that in 2016 large numbers of voters either voted for a third party or simply voted for no one or wrote in names for president as they refused to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Those voters must have something that attracts them in the Democratic platform if they are going to go with Joe Biden as their candidate. The most important thing is to beat Trump, supporting Joe Biden is secondary.
The Democrats could opt for a new candidate. Their convention begins on August 19th. Perhaps it could even be delayed, and use August 19th as the date for the platform to be determined. Most people would insist that it cannot be delayed but a delay into the beginning of September might be a good idea as the campaign is inevitably going to be too long and to shorten it by two weeks might be beneficial to the Democrats. Undoubtedly Chicago or some other city could make room to use the delayed date
From my own thoughts it strikes me Democrats want to be in a position to attract people from more conservative areas. They should not be taking a candidate from the Northeast or the West Coast where the candidates are viewed to be more liberal. Further, I believe it would be a good time to be nominating a female. I am not familiar a female from the House of Representatives or the Senate who could present any type of modestly conservative point of view to attract the middle ground. I believe a governor that has shown the ability to be in charge of a multifaceted state operation is the best choice. That probably leaves the Democrats with one of two people to consider if they followed this point of view, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico. In shifting candidates and selecting a female it is undoubtedly unfair to pass by Camilla Harris. She has been the vice president for four years. However, if you're trying to seek votes from people who are avoiding voting for Joe Biden or a liberal ticket you probably do not want to take a former California senator and Joe Biden's current vice president. That may be unfair to Camilla Harris and her four years of duty as the vice president but if you're putting together a ticket on the basis of the most important facet to win the election, I believe there are a limited number of people who can move into that slot.
Thoughts
The Democrats have themselves in a difficult position. Interestingly it was a position that was seemingly apparent 4 years ago. General managers of athletic teams are constantly evaluating their players but also making estimates of will they want them as center pieces of their team four years later. It does seem that the politicians and our political parties lack that capacity. Joe Biden's difficulties in 2024 were easy to see in 2020. In the same manner it was clear that Donald Trump would be the same kind of person in 2024 he was in 2020. He would not even acknowledge that he lost the election in 2020 and the Democrats were going to have to run against that same person and his attempt to create an autocracy with him sitting on top in 2024. We are now there and the Democrats don't seem to have any plan in place. They must either act quickly to create a Democratic slate that can appeal across the country, including the independent and disgruntled Republicans, using Joe Biden or an select an alternative candidate who can step forth and campaign for 4 months.
Obadiah Plainman
Copies of all the previous copies of this blog are available at: thoughtscm.com