Whether President Joe Biden stays or goes as the 2024 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, and trend lines as we write suggest a painful march toward the latter, the party has yet to make en effective case for Kamala Harris, who is not, to borrow from Dylan Thomas, going to go gentle into that good night.
And why, say her defenders, should she?
She’s the vice president of the United States and presumptive Democratic nominee for a second term as vice president. One of the primary duties of that office is taking over, if and when necessary, for a deceased, incapacitated or otherwise exiting president. Logically, then, Democrats trying to bat away unease at the president’s catastrophic debate performance last week should be be focused not only on Biden having a “cold” or a bad night or suffering from lack of sleep, all pathetic defenses. They should be saying: Look, if there is a problem during the second term with the president’s cognitive capabilities, or any of the other problems that beset elderly humans, the veep, herself a member of the next generation and in her prime, is ready to go.
Nothing to worry about, folks. Not compared with the chaos a second Trump term would bring. Simple, no?
No.
For that’s not what we are hearing from Democratic elites. We’re hearing instead about the Democrats’ bench of talented and ambitious governors (the likes of Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and, of course, Illinois’ own J.B. Pritzker), even as Harris defenders understandably note that those wished-for outsiders are all white people whereas Harris is the first Black person and the first woman to hold her office and would be vying to become America’s first female president. Moreover, they note, Harris has superior experience to said governors: If Biden were to exit, now or a year from now, there’s an obvious advantage in his being replaced by someone who has worked so closely at his side, along with the history-making benefits of Harris’ identity.
The implication of this equivocation and external desire? Democrats don’t think Harris is someone who can calm nerves and project confidence as their candidate and maybe is not someone who could do the job of president.
Which begs the question: Why, then, was she Biden’s choice for vice president?
So Democratic honchos now find themselves in a Catch-22.
By whispering an interest in other candidates, as many are doing, they’re undermining their own past actions and, simultaneously, their stated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. You could say the same of those ambitious governors, all of whom are bending themselves into pretzels to look like Team Biden/Harris players while simultaneously tending to their personal ambitions. We’ve not heard any of them say they would not run if Harris was also running; their support, such as it is, appears to hinge only on Biden’s decision, not any actions of Harris.
They could, we suppose, argue something along the lines of this: Harris really is the person we want, but she would not be electable. That could be used as a justification. But that leads us back to the same dilemma. Would Harris remain the veep with a Whitmer or a Shapiro? And, if not, how does that get explained? (There also, of course, is the possibility of an open convention in which Harris and others could compete for the nomination. That’s a topic for another day, probably not too long from now.)
After all, the framers understood that any single human may become incapacitated, whatever their age: The need for a credible president-in-waiting sitting in the office of vice president hardly is limited to a Biden administration. None of us is immortal.
If the stakes for the nation were not so immense, this festival of hypocrisy would be a fascinating spectacle to watch and, of course, a reminder of the general lack of honesty and transparency that has befallen the Democratic Party, even as they lob similar charges at Donald Trump and the Republicans, attacks that to our minds also are fully deserved.
But on this day when Americans celebrate their democracy and independence from tyranny, we say the American people deserve far more honesty and transparency from their two leading political parties. If Democrats believe in Harris, as they have claimed, they should get behind her and push her out there right now to show what she can do, whatever happens regarding Biden.
Democrats have been cloaking their thirst to retain power with a moral superiority that now has been exposed as mendacious and callow.
The party will have to find a way out of this mess for the good of the country.
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