[WaPo] Opinion: Are Democrats really going to do this?

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Opinion: Are Democrats really going to do this?
Democrats’ rush to Kamala Harris bypasses the question of who has the best chance of beating Trump.
By Jason Willick
July 22, 2024 at 12:51 p.m. EDT

The proposition that Kamala D. Harris is the Democratic candidate best suited to defeat Donald Trump is about as believable as the proposition that Joe Biden was mentally and physically equipped to serve as president until 2029.

That is to say: Both are obvious fictions. Democrats coalesced around the fiction of Biden’s acuity during the primary season. Now that Biden has dropped out, they are adopting the fiction that “no one is better” (as California Gov. Gavin Newsom put it on Sunday) to take on Trump in Biden’s stead. Any prospect of a competitive nomination process is evaporating as Democratic politicians — even those previously mooted as possible Biden replacements should he step aside — stampede to Harris.

Does anyone really believe Harris is the Democratic candidate most likely to block another Trump term? Unable to conceal Biden’s infirmity any longer, panicked Democratic leaders forced the president out of the 2024 race. They have a chance to put forward a strong candidate in a high-stakes election that is likely to be close. If they swiftly coronate Harris, Democrats would be elevating one of the weakest candidates available.

Harris has never shown special political talent. In 2010, she came within one point of losing to Republican Steve Cooley in California’s attorney general race, even as Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Republican Meg Whitman by 13 points for the governorship and Newsom defeated the incumbent GOP lieutenant governor by 11.

As for her run in national politics, Harris’s support quickly cratered in the 2020 Democratic primaries, where she ran to Biden’s left and dropped out early. Her tenure as vice president, substantially defined by a failed foray into immigration policy, was widely considered mediocre even by friendly media — at least until Sunday.

Harris’s service in the Biden administration and avid vouching for the president’s abilities tie her irrevocably to the age deception that just upended the race. Of course, Biden’s mulish insistence on running for a second term almost certainly reflected, in part, the president’s honest assessment of his No. 2.

Republican attack-ad makers will feast on Harris’s sundry policy pronouncements, especially from her 2020 campaign. “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” will play on loop in western Pennsylvania. Images of Harris raising her hand on the debate stage when asked if she supported eliminating private health insurance (she later said, amid criticism, that she misunderstood the question) and decriminalizing border crossing are also potent GOP fodder.

On policy, Harris’s offer to voters is essentially: How about the Biden administration, but more left-wing? This, as the public recoils from the effects of Biden policies on immigration and inflation — and as Trump is making a point of moving the Republican Party to the center on abortion and gay rights.

The fact that Harris is a weak candidate doesn’t mean she can’t win, of course. In a closely divided party system, either candidate has a shot, and Trump is widely disliked, as is Harris. She has some assets: Abortion, the issue she has championed most successfully, is a Republican weakness. She might prove able to provoke outrageous statements around race and gender from idiotic GOP politicians or influencers.

But having just gone through the excruciating process of decapitating their presidential ticket and throwing the race wide open (at least in theory), shouldn’t Democrats want to install not just a candidate who can win but a candidate who is likely to win? The list of more-talented politicians in the party — the familiar-by-now names include swing-state election winners Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona — is long (all three have already endorsed her, which more-or-less rules out a challenge).

The argument for embracing Harris by acclamation anyway is apparently that the Democrats can’t afford internal discord when the focus should be on defeating Trump. That argument served Democrats badly when they allowed Biden to glide through the primaries without a debate.

Democrats unceremoniously cashiered their erstwhile standard-bearer out of cold political calculation. Now they’re labeling him a world-historical statesman. Well and good, if that’s what needs to be done. But in their rush to back Harris, Democrats are seemingly abandoning that cold political calculation out of a mix of sudden relief and guilt.

Remember that the Democrats’ 2016 coronation of Hillary Clinton (complicated only by a nettlesome Bernie Sanders) ended in tears. The competitive 2020 primary yielded a winning candidate in Biden. The 2024 primary, lacking serious competition, was so disastrous its result was just overturned by the party.

Now the collective decision is apparently being made to once again nip internal Democratic competition in the bud — to keep marching in lockstep, to eliminate even temporary uncertainty within the party and keep politics stage-managed and controlled at every phase. Perhaps there is an organic brilliance at work here that I, as a non-Democrat, can’t recognize. Because it looks to an outsider like another manifestation of the same irrational political neuroticism that created this mess in the first place.

Opinion by Jason Willick
Jason Willick is a Washington Post columnist focusing on law, politics and foreign policy. Twitter
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