If Team Biden can't allay the fears he is too old, voters will be implicitly pricing in Harris taking his office during the next term anyway. So you either comprehensively demonstrate the "Biden old" stuff is bogus, or if you can't (because true) or can't (because incompetent), get out of the way.
Or to put it another way: every day that Team Biden isn't actually ending the "Biden old" conversation, they are running Harris as the principal at the top-of-the-ticket anyway, but only taking the costs and not taking advantage of the opportunities that come with that
Opportunities like picking a very electable VP, although I worry she'll bungle it and pick someone who doesn't help (like Newsom).
But she could try for Whitmer or Beshear, for example.
It seems to me there are way more people who would show up to vote for Harris but not Biden than Biden but not Harris. It's getting harder for me to see the downside in elevating her.
I’ve already priced her into my vote. And I also think they’ve hidden her light under a bushel these past years. But the other guy hasn’t even picked his running mate, he doesn’t really want one. He’s just as likely to kick it than Biden and we get stuck with Uday or Qusay.
Yeah, This is a classic "doesn't she look tired" hit.
The damage is done and effectively irreparable.
Anything Biden team does now can just be written off as cover-up, or falsehoods to conceal the truth. Or a good day.
Ignoring of course that a literal boiled potato is a better choice than Trump.
The more the conversation is about “Should Biden dropout” the less opportunity there is to talk about the real and present threat. That is what needs to be factored into the decision making matrix by the people that have control of whether he drops out.
Harris is the Vice President of THIS term, not necessarily the de facto replacement for the NEXT term.
IMHO, if Dems are going to be audacious, they shouldn't temper that because of pretend rules or hurt feelings.
Reliable Dems settled with Hillary in 2016 and then Joe in 2020. In both runups, fervent support for other candidates gave way.
A do over isn't practical. But the platform's the same, the ground game, appointees, and operatives. Not to put it lightly, but the biggest change would be the lawn signs.
“Pressure mounts on Biden” from the relentless coverage in the NYT in particular.
Nowhere in these articles are they mentioning the fact that Trump is 78. But Biden is too old.
