This is exactly where I’ve been for the past few days—though I had a helpful conversation with someone here last night that reassured me that a switch from Biden to Harris presents as many opportunities as risks. So I’m feeling a little better about the world today.
Not that anyone is asking me, but I have no idea what the Democrats should do right now. All the options seem bad, and there isn’t one that seems less bad than the others. And as a professional opinion-haver, it’s disorienting to have no strong opinion about something so enormously consequential.
"What if Biden withdraws and it's a huge mistake?" is a legit case for him staying in. My feeling is that the odds against him are now so steep and the condition that has created those steep odds so impossible to change that even the shock of a new candidate is now a better bet. But it's a big risk!
Trump’s public response will be: The Democrat party knows the last four years under Biden were a disaster for this country under the man who stole the election from me, and they’re looking in the couch cushions for any spare candidate they can find without his stink on them.
My cynical belief is that Obama and the 2020 primaries both landed on Biden because he’s genial, white, Christian, and male—and so palatable to a broad, somewhat bigoted electorate—and that concerns about Harris are largely motivated by the fact that she isn’t all these things.
