Joe Biden has chosen to end his career. He gives the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris. The sunset in Lanta, where my boat arrived today, seemed a fitting tribute.
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Having dealt with declining abilities by becoming a great team player, he listened to his teammates, and took one for the team. He had been running behind basically all the Democratic Senate candidates. Energetic campaigning would help, but it was clearly beyond him. When the starting pitcher is exhausted, you bring in a relief pitcher – it's an easy baseball decision.
Harris will be the Democratic nominee. Because Biden won all the primaries basically unopposed, the delegates are overwhelmingly Biden delegates. They're selected for loyalty to Biden and doing what they're supposed to – Team Biden doesn't want a chaos delegate voting for someone else. I expect herd behavior towards Harris.
The Harris campaign has a ridiculously good setup. Republicans attacked Biden's age and infirmity. Now they have the 78-year-old against the 59-year-old. Democrats attacked Trump's criminality. Their new candidate is a prosecutor. The final anti-Trump GOP candidate was Nikki Haley. It's easy for me to imagine Haley-to-Harris crossover voters.
If you let Republicans concentrate on building a smear campaign over many years, it will defeat anyone. It defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. But in 2008, when they had everything prepared for a showdown with their hated Hillary, Democrats nominated someone who was not at all Hillary. Republicans didn't know what to do and lost big. Harris has never really been Republicans' top target, so Democrats have a fresh candidate three and a half months from the election. This is good.
Obviously, nothing is assured. I always have reservations about California Democrats for President. They gain power by consolidating support within the party, not by winning over swing voters. My dream candidate is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who keeps winning big in her swing state.
I have no idea where the race is overall because the polls are very unreliable. The GOP primary polls tell the story. They make error after error overestimating Trump's margin by like 7%. And finally in Michigan they overestimate Trump's margin by over 15%! This may be the year where the low response rate problem really becomes unmanageable. (Nate Silver can't say this, because he would would be saying "Don't come to my poll aggregation site.")
Nancy Pelosi's hand in this is clear. Asked to quantify her responsibility for Biden's decision, one House Democrat up for re-election said "50%". Her people were pressing Biden, and her lack of an official role gave her special freedom to act directly. She called Biden on Saturday afternoon; that night he gathered two close friends to draft his statement. As soon as I realized that she wanted him out, I did too. She is always right about these kinds of things.
I was initially surprised to hear that Pelosi wanted an open convention. But of course! If the Republicans aren't certain about the nominee for a little while (with some getting thrown off by their own conspiracy theories), they can't attack as effectively. Keeping some mystery in the air makes for a more exciting convention and bigger media spectacle.
And of course, it will be Kamala. Joe's delegates are voting. Nancy always knows where her votes are.
