A few items of interest amid the craziness of the past ten days.
First my curtain-opener in POLITICO Magazine, part of a post-Biden compendium that was nearly three weeks in the making:
After three weeks of gazing into the political abyss, Democrats have cycled through the stages of grief, accepted the inherent risk of a presidential shake-up, and euphorically embraced a candidate they would have feared leading their ticket just a month ago. The swap leaves them with four months to climb out of the deep hole Biden dug over the past three and a half years.
The fundamental challenge for Harris is the same as it was for Biden: irrespective of age or acuity, American voters tell pollsters they remember the Trump era more fondly than the Biden years, and they believe that Trump’s policies helped them more than Biden’s have. So long as this is the case, victory will remain out of reach. Harris and her running mate will need to dispel the Trump nostalgia, camp out in battleground states, and contrast their vision for the next four years with the dark future they promise under Republican rule. The battle has already begun to define her among an ambivalent electorate, with Republicans seeking to reinforce a lightweight image while Democrats showcase a tough-minded prosecutor and foil to Trump.
For his part, Trump finds himself in the unfamiliar position of the front-runner. One hundred days out, the former president is on a winning trajectory, one that hasn’t wavered for the past nine months. For the first time in his political career, it is the other side that stands to benefit from injecting variance and uncertainty. That Trump is in this position at all is a testament to uncharacteristic discipline and poise, both by the candidate and the campaign; the White House vs. jailhouse dichotomy seems to have focused the mind. But Trump is a guerilla candidate at heart, and he must take care to avoid the many unforced errors imaginable against a history-making nominee.
Four months out, the presidency is Trump’s to lose; but after an eight day stretch that saw the attempted assassination of one presumptive nominee and the political defenestration of an incumbent president, events loom large. And with Biden looking like a bigger albatross by the day, down-ballot Democrats are ecstatic to shed his baggage, even if it means rolling the dice with an upstart underdog.
Second, our post-Biden🚨emergency🚨 episode of The Lobby Shop where my colleagues and I dive deeper into what it all means, and how we should be thinking about the rebooted race. (It should be noted that our previous mini-sode correctly predicted the JD Vance pick.)
Third, just before the switcheroo I talked to Maggie Haberman for her New York Times piece with Jonathan Swan on how Republicans might approach a Harris nomination.
The Trump campaign was always going to make Ms. Harris, who has repeatedly said that Mr. Biden is the nominee and that they’re running together, part of the story, particularly with Mr. Biden’s visible physical struggles, said Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide.
“But with the prospect of a switch at the top of the ticket, there’s a sudden sense of urgency around defining Kamala Harris and cementing a lackluster image that has long made Democrats queasy,” Mr. Donovan said. But he also noted a potential pitfall for Mr. Trump: “Being the front-runner against another history-making candidate would introduce new risks for a campaign hoping to reap historic gains among Black voters.”
It was even enough to get me on Fox News for the first time in a while (kind of.)
Fourth, and it already feels like an eternity ago, but my take on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, live from the CNN/POLITICO Grill. Having been to every* GOP convention since 2004, I can say without a doubt it is the most united, energized, and optimistic I have seen the crowd since W-era NYC. Yet every word of it was geared toward a candidate who is no longer in the race!
And finally, because you made it this far, a couple thoughts on what it all means as the dust settles.
Democrats obviously made the right move here; the experience of the past three weeks further confirmed the suspicions of all 50 million debate watchers, that the Biden they saw on the stage lacked the capacity to mount the campaign necessary to win. And while the party has unified and consolidated behind Harris in an impressive fashion, real damage was done over the course of three excruciating weeks. Their fortunes have certainly improved over the past week; time will tell whether they are better or worse off than they were a month ago. At the very least down-ballot Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief as they no longer fear the worst. Whether that relief lasts remains to be seen.
Harris has a big opportunity with her running mate pick, and she’s going to need to make the most of it. While the post doesn’t have the same salience as it did when race was between two term-limited geezers, the trade of Scranton Joe for Coastal Kamala raises real questions about the path to 270. She has a chance to pick somebody who can add value in the Rust Belt path favored by Joe Biden (Gov. Josh Shapiro in PA, e.g.), or double down on an appeal to the sunbelt stated that had seemed to be slipping away (Sen. Mark Kelly in AZ; Gov. Roy Cooper in NC.) Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) has been the most solicitous aspirant, taking to Morning Joe to needle JD Vance as a fake Kentuckian, but brings little to the table from an electoral standpoint. At the end of the day it’s the superbowl of anodyne white guys who code as vaguely conservative, and you would expect battleground popularity to be the biggest factor.
Republicans should be ecstatic with this outcome, and if you described it to them a year ago they wouldn’t believe their good fortune. But the experience of the past three weeks has been disorienting, and while Harris is no world-beater, the experience of the party rallying around the VP they had long feared has left the GOP flat-footed and somewhat bewildered. For a party driven chiefly by owning the libs, the schadenfreude of July was downright bacchanalian, and the hangover is already setting in. Trump and Republicans remain in the drivers seat, but they must be careful how they at a time when the trajectory is their best friend, and November can’t get here soon enough.