A New Political World
Joe Biden fell on his sword and Democrats are poised to make Kamala Harris their 2024 standard bearer
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
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It looks like I chose the wrong week to go on vacation …
I’m flying to the West Coast, but because of the magic of airplane Wi-Fi, I have a few thoughts to share about yesterday.
I had fully expected President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race — and I was convinced it was the best path forward for the Democratic Party. Yet, seeing the news yesterday still felt like a gut punch. Joe Biden has been one of the best presidents of my lifetime. His foreign policy stewardship has been second to none. He is a good and decent man — a mensch, as my people would say — and it’s heartbreaking to see him fall on his sword for party and country. He is a hero and a patriot, and dropping out of the presidential race — even under enormous pressure — is one of the most selfless political acts I’ve ever seen.
Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president. This was never really in doubt and once Biden endorsed her bid for the White House, it was a done deal. Since yesterday afternoon, close to 200 House and Senate Democrats have announced support for her candidacy. It’s only a matter of time before all of them do. No one will challenge her for the nomination, and she will likely win the party nod by acclamation at the DNC in Chicago next month.
It’s incredible what a difference a day makes. On Sunday morning, Democrats were truly in disarray. Today, they are a united and energized political party. In the 24 hours since Biden dropped out, Harris has raised more than $80 million - a staggering sum of money. In one day, Democrats flipped the script on the 2024 campaign. It’s a tribute to the unity among Democrats and the desperate desire from every corner of the party to defeat Donald Trump in November.
There are legitimate reasons for concern about Harris’s political skills, but give her credit for this: since Biden’s disastrous debate performance, there have been zero leaks from Harris’s team or her political allies. She allowed no political daylight between her and the president as she cris-crossed the country on behalf of the ticket. And as soon as Biden dropped out, the vice president and her whip operation sprung into action, quickly lining up endorsements and support. Harris has shown some deft political maneuvering and deserves credit for handling an unprecedented situation so effectively.
Most political observers, it seems, saw Biden’s withdrawal coming, with one notable exception — the Trump campaign. I’m genuinely amazed at how flat-footed Trump and the GOP have been since Biden’s announcement. Trump complained that it wasn’t fair, even fraudulent, for Harris and Biden to swap since his campaign had spent so much time and money preparing to run against the president … which is an insane argument (though consider the source). Speaker of the House Mike Johnson complained “It’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate who has been chosen through the democratic, small-d democratic process.” Other Republicans declared Biden’s withdrawal a “coup,” while many demanded that Biden immediately resign. Admittedly, it’s adorable to see the party of January 6 complain about democratic infringements and coups. We’ll see how this plays out, but it seems that Trump and his team have no clue how to challenge Harris (at least for now).
Since yesterday, I’ve been thinking about all the women I met in 2018 knocking on doors for Democratic candidates, angry and bitter over Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. They were the vanguard of a larger shift among suburban and college-educated women toward the Democratic Party — which we’ve seen reshape American politics over the past straight elections. I wonder how many of them will stream to the polls in November to right the wrong done to Clinton in 2016.
I did a long thread on Twitter about why Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race is nothing like LBJ's withdrawal in 1968. You can read the whole thing here, but to make a long story short, in 1968, the Democratic Party was hopelessly divided because of the Vietnam War. The 2024 Democratic Party is barely divided at all.
I did a quick piece for MSNBC on why I think Harris can win — and how Biden did his party a huge favor by quickly endorsing his Vice President.
I’m on vacation all week but I’ll try to send along a few thoughts as the Harris campaign begins to emerge.
Musical Interlude
Unified, except over Palestine and Israel.
Cliff