A new hope
Shockingly, Joe Biden doesn’t care about my blog. Hours after I posted my last article about the possibility of him dropping out of the 2024 US presidential race and what that would imply, he did just that. And my entire — superb — analysis became — superbly — superfluous. I added an update the next day not to look completely out of touch with reality — there were literally 3 hours between my posting and Biden’s announcement — but I knew the trend was done with.
Meanwhile, a new trend started from all of this, obviously: that new trend is called — brat — Vice President Kamala Harris. The only 2020 democratic presidential candidate to actually know who Tupac was without the help Wikipedia or ChatGPT, she had become a welcome new face in the administration as Vice President to Joe Biden. At the time, there were discussions about the possibility of Biden running for only one term and Harris taking over, but these were obviously never set in stone…
Up until a few weeks ago, when the tufa that was the presidential debate and Trump’s assassination attempt made it impossible to ignore the risk democrats were taking with the frail Joe Biden. And so the sitting president took the only decision that would make the party get out of this spot in style — and with hopes to actually win the election: he chose to drop out of the race.
While, as I argued in my previous article, an incumbent dropping out is inherently risky, this might have been the single greatest blow from the democrats to Trump’s campaign one could imagine:
Joe Biden’s perspectives were objectively looking dire. Try as you might, that debate made many people scared, all the way to Hollywood royalty George Clooney. Having a presidential candidate seemingly incapable of finishing a simple sentence in front of a live camera is inescapably problematic.
The Trump assassination attempt only made it worse: not only was Trump looking like the more coherent candidate (which in itself was troubling), but he now came out as some sort of survivor/hero figure. Again, try as you might, having survived a sniper’s bullet gives you extra credit on a fundamentally humanistic level. Something Biden — or anyone else in that position — could not shake off. Not even President Obama.
It therefore looked like the outcome was inevitable: a more or less sizeable landslide for Trump, with hopes that 2028 would bring a new crop of strong democratic candidates. Gavin Newsom? Gretchen Whitmer? Who knows, there are more where this came from. However, that meant a second Trump mandate that was sure to have a profoundly destabilizing impact of US democracy and therefore the world: he now knows how the political game is played…
And then came Joe Biden’s announcement. In one fell swoop, he took over the narrative, got all eyes back on the democrats and Kamala Harris as flag bearer of this new campaign. Overnight, everyone was reenergized by this still somewhat fresh figure: as Vice President, she was relatively discreet and her 2020 campaign had ended too early for people to truly remember. Yet she remains a young, dynamic and sharp politician, especially against the likes of Donald Trump. And, of course, she is a woman of color, something as progressive as can be. Well, almost: she could be gay…
There you have it: Biden succeeded in inflicting the worst possible blow to Trump — he switched the momentum towards the democrats in general and Kamala Harris in particular. And the Trump camp’s reaction since it happened tells you everything you need to know about their state of mind today: they are looking genuinely scared, so they try virtually every argument — and nickname — they can think of against her. So far to no avail: Harris registered record donations since she got officially endorsed by Biden, and her numbers keep rising in the polls, including in the ever-so-crucial swing states. What a difference a few days make…
The fight is anything but over: Trump is still going strong, and Harris has yet to fully establish her campaign. And we still have to see if that unprecedented switcheroo will truly bring more than it takes for democrats. In other words, now is the time to hit the ground running, campaign throughout the United States, launch support adds, post on social media, spell out campaign programs and first term plans for President Harris, bring out all the support she can muster — including from George Clooney — and basically leave no stone unturned. It’s possible: she does not seem like the lazy kind…
#KamalaHarris2024