Ezra Klein has followed up his New York Times audio Op-Ed of last week, in which he argued for a brokered Democratic convention to choose a replacement for a (says Ezra) too-old-to-campaign Joe Biden, with a long podcast interview that aired yesterday with a Brookings scholar on how primaries and party conventions work. They discuss how Ezra’s dream scenario would operate in practice. Here are just a few parts of the interview that I wanted to comment on.
First, an opening LOL about how he imagines Biden’s withdrawal:
Klein: Well, let me try to live in this world for a minute, try to imagine how it would feel and what would happen. Let’s think August, maybe July, right? There are a couple of months here.
Here’s what I see happening. There is a mad dash. I mean, Joe Biden gives a sort of heroic, honorable speech: I’ve decided that it’s the right thing for me is to be a bridge to the next generation, that we all need to know when our time is up, that I have important work that I still need to focus on and trying to defend Ukraine and Israel, Palestine and all these different things. And so there’s this sort of applause to Joe Biden.
“And so there’s this sort of applause to Joe Biden.” See? All settled.
Next, Ezra’s Democratic Bench:
[Ezra]: And then all of a sudden, there is this mad dash. You have, of course, Vice President Harris, but it’s very easy to name eight or 10 other people who would be, you know, very plausible here — Buttigieg, Raimondo, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, Raphael Warnock. Anybody can have their list. Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar.
I Googled Jared Polis to check my memory that his state was Colorado (right!), then Googled (Gina) Raimondo to check my vague sense that she’d just left the cabinet to run a hockey team (wrong! Marty Walsh the former Labor Secretary left the cabinet to run the NHL Players’ Association, and former climate advisor Gina McCarthy was the New Englander I confused Raimondo with). I’ll just say: Good luck getting independent voters in six or seven swing states to learn who these people are in the six-to-eight weeks between a convention and early voting.
But, as Ezra likes to say, “I want to zero in on that.” I want to zero in on this bench, this list:
Buttigieg, Raimondo, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, Raphael Warnock. Anybody can have their list. Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar.
How seriously can Ezra mean these names? Booker and Klobuchar lost in 2020, which isn’t fatal (Biden lost a few times in his life before winning), but we’re talking an eight-week campaign in Ezra’s scenario. Buttigieg maybe won Iowa in 2020, but nobody really knows for sure because Iowa was such a tabulation disaster, and was so unrepresentative that the Democrats had to stop doing Iowa altogether. (Let me adopt Ezra’s tone here: I like much of what Pete has done. So there’s this sort of applause to Pete Buttigieg.)
Zeroing in a little more:
Raphael Warnock
Why not say Jon Ossoff, if you’re casually getting rid of Democratic senators who won purple Georgia by razor-thin margins, in a year that we have to defend Montana, Ohio and Arizona to try to keep at least a 51-seat majority?
Here’s why not: Because saying “Jon Ossoff” doesn’t defend you against the charge that you’re against the actual sitting Vice President, who was actually on the ticket that beat the GOP in 2020, because she’s Black.
When white conservatives do this with “Clarence Thomas” or “Shelby Steele,” liberals can see it. But for the next few months, as liberal and Resistance-allied pundits try to say they’re not sexist because Whitmer, and they’re not racist because Warnock (or Booker), they should be advised: it’s transparent.
Next, we move closer to the real subject: Vice President Kamala Harris.
[Ezra]: And so in an often dead period, you have what would be a genuinely riveting democratic spectacle. I think the thing people worry about, and quite reasonably, is that the party fractures here, that the fighting immediately becomes riven with ill will, that it becomes toxic. That, you know — should this be given to Vice President Harris? And if it’s not given to Vice President Harris, does that mean the party is passing over a Black woman, and what does that mean about the party? But it could also just be a contest. How do you imagine that playing out?
Note: “Given,” not earned. Somebody’s ticket earned 81 million votes in 2020, somebody’s been working as the Vice President for three years. But in Ezra’s mind, the nomination would be “given” to her.
And if it’s not given to Vice President Harris, does that mean the party is passing over a Black woman
That’s literally what it would mean. The Vice President goes next, and she’s a Black woman, so if you go past her to someone else, you are passing over a Black woman. What he really means is, “Is there a non-racist explanation for passing her over that would fly?” (For what it’s worth, his scholar guest predicted the situation would not turn toxic because the short campaign season would prevent whoever’s chosen from going negative. Shrug.)
The last bit I want to comment on goes directly to the Harris heart of the matter:
[Ezra]: We typically think about something like this passing on to the vice president pretty easily. Harris, I think, occupies an unusual space in the party. She has some really significant backers and fans. And also, there is concern. She polls a little bit behind Joe Biden.
How would this work when you have somebody who in many ways would be the obvious next candidate but, also, there’s concern and worry about them as the next nominee?
I’ll move past the dismissive word “fans” to zero in on this:
And also, there is concern
[...]
but, also, there’s concern and worry about them
In this view, “concern” is just out there like the weather. Monday there will be clouds, Tuesday there will be rain, and Wednesday there will be Concern. No one in particular has those concerns. Of course not! If they did, those people who had those concerns would be responsible for owning them, articulating them, defending them, and facing any accusations of racism, sexism or other irrationality head-on.
I’m all for the Democrats gaming out every conceivable health and emergency contingency under the sun. What happens if a nominee is incapacitated after the ballots are printed but before early voting? After early voting but before Election Day? After Election Day but before that safe harbor day in December? And so on. We are facing an opposition movement that somehow manages to be both lawless and litigious, so I’m all for people who are good at pessimism and planning to have all the laws and party rules at the ready for every scenario.
But until there’s ever such a grim necessity of putting such a plan into action, let’s leave the concerns, and concern-trolling, to others. And let’s keep working.