Read Ezra Klein's latest on a "mini-primary" to replace Biden. It's not as terrible as many of his colleagues' takes, but 2 notes:
1: He takes as given that Biden is incapacitated. Maybe so; but Klein's MD is not in evidence.
2: It ignores the huge practical obstacles to anyone but Harris...1/
2/ One obvious one, going unmentioned (AFAIK) in every pundit thumbsucker about the mythical perfect candidate: ballot access. The landscape is more than complicated enough to admit unlimited R ratfucking. Another: campaign funds. Biden/Harris money doesn't readily flow to [D] candidate...
3/ Related: campaign organization. Biden/Harris has hundreds of offices open. Staff. Digital boiler rooms, etc. A non-Harris D doesn't just inherit that either. Not to mention to top organization...
4/ Then there's the intellectual infrastructure of a national campaign: the policy shop, the informal college of expert advisors, the candidate themself, trained up on a host of issues that, say, a midwestern governor doesn't usually deal with, and so on...
5/ All of which is to say that a 21st c. national campaign in the US is an enormous, complex organization that doesn't appear whole in weeks.
Pundits seem to have stopped paying attention to the actual structure of US politics after watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...
6/ Maybe Biden needs to go; maybe not. But of this I'm certain: the US elite political media needs to be radically transformed, with most of its current practitioners consigned to the Albany beat.*
*Yes, I am that mean.
/fin
pundit sobbing to their editor: please, I'm *begging* you, not another year of covering Hochul
editor: fine, whatever. You can cover Adams
pundit sniffing, drying tears: ...ok
editor: ...from Albany
There are rules about all of this. They can’t just throw them out. It’s profoundly anti democracy.
Plus, it’s guaranteed to start a war with what appears to be the majority of democrats who want Biden. They lost this battle in the 2016 and 2020 primaries. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.
OUCH*
*said as someone who lives and works near Albany and unfortunately does have to follow politics for work purposes (would anyway because living in society, but it would be nice to take a few days here and there to bury my head in the sand)
Not saying you're wrong on any point, but I feel like "we can't do that" is a weak argument when we can just as easily say "we don't need to," which a much stronger, truer argument.
Aren't there still big money differences, campaign offices, staffing and staff quality differences favoring Biden - the mechanics aren't much changed are they?
One noticeable thing: even with name recognition and someone reportedly worth $1 billion as a running mate, RJK Jr. is still not on the ballot in many states - and in some cases is only on the ballot because a minor party said, ok, why not.
This is a good thread about the technical, logistical reasons any replacement other than Harris would be a problem. But there are still other reasons! People start early-voting very soon, and most of the non-Harris politicians being mentioned as trial balloons are not nationally well-known figures,
Aside from 1) the logistical problem (campaign apparatus and money are transferrable to Harris, and no-one else); 2) the narrative impossibility of rejecting Biden *and* his veep; and 3) the betrayal and division it would involve, what gets me is: people proposing folks with no national reputation.
After months and years of "do something," and now a very simple path remains if we only have the courage to complete the course.
Ezra is a special boy, but that's why we have systems.
Please don't start this.
We have many more years of beating back the barbarians at the gate shit with rural whites, white males, and conservatives of most stripes
Nothing supports your argument about how dangerously radical your opponents are better than activating a never-before-used provision in the Constitution to remove a sitting President against his will. Brilliant strategy.
gosh they also probably realize that a president is an ideological figurehead, delegates 95% of the work, and if he dies america gets its first black woman president, so shoveling his bones over the finish line may make more sense than blowing up the party nom and starting over with a 4 month runway
If Biden steps aside it has to be Harris. She was part of the team that won the primaries There’s no time to choose anyone else There’s no savior candidate. Voters can understand that any dem is better than Trump. Dems got to start making that case and stop picking lint out of their belly buttons
Didn't see that piece. Don't much follow Klein, though some folks I know seem to think he isn't dreadful. If that's in comparison to his colleagues, then that's a low bar.
I don’t think this is true—I remember first coming across his blog when he was still an undergrad & political blogs were a hot new thing. He’s always been a pretty normie Democrat & IMO he mostly still produces good center-left political content.
But he’s lost his mind on this issue.
Ezra Klein's grasp of the mechanics of politics is almost nonexistent. He exists in a weird space between actual political theory and a post-Freshman politics seminar bong party. He had two podcasts in February talking about a brokered convention, the wankiest wank that every wanked.
Ezra is the kind of pundit that would be just fine with authoritarianism as long as it is their kind of authoritarianism. He has been and will always be a hack.
