The basic concept is simple. In an extraordinrary crisis the VP is the logical and expected person to take over from the President. That's literally what they're there for. The constitution obvs doesn't speak to the succession of a nomination. But the principle is deeply ...
2/ embedded in American political culture, at least as the default assumption. What happened after the late June debate was just such an extraordinary crisis for the Democratic political coalition, one in which no legitimate recanvassing of the primary process could take...
3/ place. So when Biden stepped aside Harris was the logical, expected and basically inevitable replacement. that reality was rapidly confirmed by a vast cross section of Democratic activists, voters, small donors, and elected officials. Biden added his own legitimacy and ...
4/ blessing to Harris's ascent. But he had no ability to force the matter on his own. He couldn't even save his own nomination. No one else decided to challenge Harris because no politician enters a campaign to play out any writer or pundit's fantasy. They would only ...
5/ challenge her if they thought there was a good chance they could win. And every one of them rapidly realized there was no chance they could win. And it was over. The Thunderdome crowds conceit that they were standing up for an open process against party elites was ...
6/ always a mix of comical and grotesque. It was precisely the most connected and wired commentators, editorialists and influencers who backed the idea, along with quietly quite a number of elected officials. The idea that the folks at the center of power, with the biggest ...
7/megaphones were standing up for an open process against a smokefilled room elite was some kind of collossal failure of self-awareness or basically a fraud. Many said, well maybe it's too late now but it wasn't when we first proposed the idea in the spring. But of course it was.
8/ The idea was first proposed right as Biden was clinching the nomination in the primaries. What possible logic was there to hold another fake pundit-constructed process when the actual process was underway. Democratic voters chose Biden. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe Biden ...
9/ was wrong to run. But both those points are irrelevant in terms of just winging it and making up a new process because you want to and you have a big enough platform to come close to manifesting your fantasies into reality. The simple reality is that everything changed ...
10/ after the June debate. Some things that had been impossible became possible, the door closed on others that had been viable before Biden's poor showing. It became clear over a period of days and weeks that Biden had suffered a catastrophic loss of confidence and support ...
11/ among Democratic voters and party stakeholders and one that couldn't be repaired. And we know what happened from there. The whole Thunderdome idea wasn't just unrealistic and, as is now even more clear, likely a disaster for Democrats' electoral prospects. Most importantly...
12/ it was deeply wrong, a perversion of the most basic scaffolding of democratic legitimacy. None of this is directed to the MAGA influencers pretending to care about Biden's fate. They're professional liars, raised on deception and feigned grievance like mother's milk.
13/ But it's really shameful for the purveyors of the Thunderdome fantasy to be lo-fi burnishing the idea that Harris's nomination was some kind of rush-job effort forced on Democratic voters. The simple reality is that precisely the opposite is the case. The masses of ...
14/ masses of Demcoratic voters, small dollar donors and activists made their views known with the voiced support of Biden himself in all the imperfect ways they were able to without a formal voting process. That's obvious to anyone who was watching and if that wasn't ...
15/ obvious enough the proof of it was in the basically unanimous support for Harris once her grasp on the nomination was clear. There's this really perverse desire to ignore these pretty clear expressions of popular opinion in the name of some pretend 'open process'.
16/ Skepticism about Harris, the various machinations to shunt her aside all came from precisely the party elites and the pundits and influencers with the loudest megaphones. Pretending otherwise is simply absurd.
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