You may be right, but I don't think there's any reason to entirely rule out an open convention scenario, provided we're clear eyed wrt immense downside risks it entails. I also think we need genuine assurances that the Bidens are taking seriously the Q of whether he has the fight in him to do this.
The reason to rule it out is that it would be racist and sexist to suddenly say "Actually we don't think Harris should take his place" when that's who we previously chose to take his place if anything should happen to him. It looks like we didn't mean it, we were pandering.
Why doubt that “the Bidens are taking seriously the Q of whether he has the fight in him to do this?” The real problem is that the Bidens might not be able to answer this Q accurately.
They need to be clear eyed about whether he can campaign for the next 5 months, be alert enough to manage the likely insurrection if Trump loses, and then be able to hang on until Jan 20. I don’t care what happens on Jan 21, bc Harris will be a fine president.
In no scenario is the decision actually made by the convention in a competitive open vote. That is not who the delegates are. They’re not in any real sense representatives of Dem voters. They’re the audience for the speeches.
It’d be Harris, by immediate elite consensus, effectively unchallenged.
The formal procedure will involve a convention vote, as it always does. But it won’t be a wide open mini-primary where Harris has to go multiple ballots against Newsom or whoever. Nobody who matters is going to challenge her for it. It’d be just as pro forma as convention roll calls usually are.
The reason the NYT want him to step aside is his hostility to anti-labor, anti-monopolistic, and anti-environmental groups. The NYT is not a liberal paper.
There would already be at least two factions fighting tooth and nail: pro Harris, and pro every other potential candidate. Do we want to risk PUMA and Bernie bro type division with only four months to reconcile?
