The Dump Kamala Problem

It looks as though David Ignatius's column from earlier this week has precipitated a rush to find potential replacements for Kamala, even though this will be a feckless enterprise.

Columnists at The Washington Post, New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer and a prominent independent writer said there are "better options available" for Biden’s running mate and that he should choose one of them if he wants a shot at winning re-election.

Among the Democrats mentioned to replace Harris were Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Ignatius himself recommended Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for whatever reason. Gov Whitmer is the only one on this list who's also been named a potential replacement for Joe himself. Joe's potential replacements have included California Gov Newsom, who has since taken himself out of the running, and Illinois Gov Pritzker -- and that's about it. Besides Newsom, Whitmer, and Pritzker, this piece from just a week ago at The Hill can find only Pete Buttigieg and AOC, which illustrates the real problem, which goes well beyond either Joe or Kamala.

The whole question of whether Kamala can be dumped from the ticket is actually a question of who can replace Joe Biden, because the issue is whether Joe can make it to January 2029 without the need for a replacement, and this is a likely enough contingency that people are asking serious questions about Kamala.

But if the pundits are asking serious questions about presidential succession, shouldn't they be asking which potential replacement for Kamala would be most reassuring as a potential president? In other words, why are we even thinking about people like Karen Bass, Raphael Warnock, Tammy Duckworth, or even Gov Whitmer? Any of these would be hard to imagine as even marginally better than Kamala.

But then, if we cross the ones off the list who are just potential Dan Quayles or Spiro Agnews, who emerges as a potential Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, or Lyndon Johnson? JB Pritzker? With Newsom out of the running, that's all that's left, unless we drop down to Pete Buttigieg and AOC. Might as well stay with Kamala if those are the choices; at least she helps the ticket with blacks. And this brings us closer to the central problem:

If President Biden wants Black voters to come out in support of him in 2024, he better not be thinking of running without Kamala Harris — at least, that’s what “The View” host Sunny Hostin argued on Thursday.

. . . Hostin pointed out that, in 2020, Biden earned 91% percent of the Black vote, and swore that Black people would come out and support him again — if Kamala Harris is his running mate.

The problem has been the disappearance of the New Deal coalition, which up to Kennedy was labor; the Northern industrial upper class; Catholics, Jews, and other ethnics; and Southern segregationists. Under Nixon, the South accepted Reconstruction, and Southern whites saw Republicans as a better alternative to the old Democrat alliance between Northern industrial colonialism and Southern seregationists. Labor gradually left the coalitrion as well, and Trump is re-emphasizing this:

Trump, in an interview with CNBC, aligned himself with auto workers and warned them that the Biden administration, paired with UAW leadership, is not only not stopping China from gaining economic dominance over the EV industry but actively working to hand the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) full control of EV supply chains.

The Northern industrialists will still get rich off EVs, but they won't have to negotiate with US unions to produce them. It's all a win-win as far as they're concerned. So at this point, the New Deal coalition has lost labor, Southern whites, and Catholics. It's gained African-Americans since Johnson, gays, radical feminists, aging hippies, and parlor socialists, but the coalition at large is reduced, so that at best, the population is evenly divided, and the Democrats can't afford to lose any more of the groups it currently has.

The problem is that those remaining groups have no reason to remain in a cohesive alliance. Blacks, as Sunny Hostin pointed out, will not support Democrats unless they're made a prominent part of the coalition, especially by having a black on the presidential ticket. But this leaves gays, radical feminists, aging hippies, and parlor socialists without the same leverage, which is how Bernie Sanders was eased out of the running in 2016 and 2020; the same will happen with Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy Jr in 2024 -- and if either Joe or Kamala is replaced, it won't be by anyone like Buttigieg or AOC, either. It will be either a black or a cis white machine politician heavily indebted to blacks who, however, won't win.

The real problem is that Joe is the last vestige of the old New Deal coalition -- a Southern segregationist allied with Northern industrialists (although the Southern segregationists were traditionally the vice president) -- who can gloss over those differences. Given the demands that blacks will exert over the remaining coalition -- and the fact that Barack Obama was a unique phenomenon that won't repeat -- potential Democrat nominees are likely to be from a group that currently includes Karen Bass, Raphael Warnock, Hakeem Jeffries, and Kamala herself. None of these is electable in the country at large.