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.
Oh yeah.
My point isn't the affirmative case for Harris. Mine is a media critique--the fact that writing about mythical alternatives to Harris w/out addressing the nuts and bolts is both stupid and dangerous.
All the media idiots are just nostalgic for when Governor Eric Baker did a floor challenge against Matt Santos at the convention, but Arnie Vinick never once mentioned it afterward which I’m sure they’d say is wrong of him.
Aren't there still big money differences, campaign offices, staffing and staff quality differences favoring Biden - the mechanics aren't much changed are they?
