Democrat Megadonor On Disaffection With Harris

We have a great deal yet to learn about July's soft coup that forced Biden out of the presidential race. A so-called megadonor, John Morgan, has been talking lately, although I'm not sure how much he actually knows, or if he was even involved in that process. On one hand, the conventional wisdom for now is that the Democrat megadonors were responsible for pushing Joe out:

On a Tuesday in early July, 75 wealthy Democratic political donors gathered on a Zoom call to discuss the path forward for President Joe Biden after his calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump, according to a person on the call.

Only one of the donors said they thought Biden should stay in the race, this person said. All the others made it very clear that they believed Biden needed to drop out of the race, if the party wanted to defeat Trump in November.

. . . Many of these donors laid their positions out in stark terms: If Biden refused to drop out, they would not be giving money to help his reelection until polls showed that he was a clear favorite to beat Trump.

The story dates from July 18, not long before Joe did withdraw, but it notes that even before he withdrew, momentum was building for Kamala:

In an unexpected twist, events that feature Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s likely successor should he step aside, have started to sell out.

An online seating chart for a concert event with Harris in Pittsfield, Mass. on July 27 shows it is almost entirely sold out. Tickets start at $100 and go up to just over $12,000, according to the invitation. Folk legend James Taylor and cello star Yo-Yo Ma are the headliners.

By July 23, only days after Joe dropped out, Kamala had become the consensus choice:

On Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the race for his party’s nomination and quickly endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. In a little more than 24 hours, she has consolidated the party around her candidacy.

The piece lists seven reasons for this, many of which were wishful thinking -- Kamala would already be fully briefed on the issues and ready to hit the ground running, for instance -- but it concludes simply that only Kamala had built a credible case for herself among the Democrat leadership, something that apparently had been taking place before Joe's final decision to drop out. It's hard to avoid thinking this wasn't a surprise, and the process was already wired.

Now we have John Morgan, characterized at News Nation as a "Democratic megadonor", weighing in on Harris's campaign. According to Wikipedia,

John Bryan Morgan (born March 31, 1956) is an American attorney. He is best known as founder of personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan. Politico described Morgan as "the godfather of Florida's medical marijuana amendment and a Democratic fundraiser."

. . . Morgan has been an advisor and fundraiser for Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi.

. . . Morgan's estimated net worth ranges from $500 million to $730 million.

His net worth doesn't put him in the finpol range, but his relentless self-promotion makes him a wannabe. News Nation at the link above covers an interview he gave Monday night:

Biden stepped down from the presidential race in July, amid pressure from high-ranking Democratic figures. He endorsed Harris no less than an hour later, while former President Obama took five days to endorse Harris on his X page.

“He did not want to go gently,” Morgan said of Biden. “He nominated her, basically Obama did not want her. Obama did not endorse her for five days, Pelosi did not want her.” “I think it was to say, F you to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and every representative that was pushing him out… and I think he was pissed,” Morgan told Cuomo.

. . . “Pelosi told her California delegation, there will be a conference, there will be a caucus, there will be a convention,” Morgan said, a point touched upon by many Republican politicians and commentators during the process. “We basically ran on this deal where ‘democracy, democracy!’ And then we didn’t have democracy in picking our nominee.”

Morgan, who admitted he did not personally donate to Harris’s campaign, criticized the way the campaign handled its funds, saying it could put her presidential future in doubt.

. . . Morgan argued that despite Harris’s performance in the presidential debate against President-elect Donald Trump, her history showed she was unsuitable to take on the Republican party this election cycle.

“We already saw what she looked like on the national stage,” Morgan said. “Look, she’s got to be talented to have done what she did in California. I’ll give her that.

“But she was not ready for prime time, and then they rolled her out in prime time, and she got destroyed.”

On one hand, Morgan himself suggessts he was out of the loop, since in his version, he didn't donate to the Harris campaign. But the sketchy information we're beginning to see from the other sources linked above suggests there was a behind-the-scenes campaign in favor of Harris even before Joe dropped out, while other potential replacements -- Newsom, Whitmer, or Pritzker -- apparently had no equivalent shadow efforts.

Morgan is basically griping about decisions that were forced on Democrat leadership in late July, when the real question should be why everyone waited so long that they had those decisions forced on them then. The question continues to be how aware those Democrat powers were of Joe's decline in the months and even years before his stumbles in June and his disastrous debate at the end of the month.

Now also, while Morgan says he didn't donate to the Harris campaign, if he was a Democrat megadonor, was he among the group that is said to have withheld its donations to Biden to force his withdrawal? Why was Biden's cognitive decline such a surprise to these insiders that they waited until July to make their move?

How much, specifically, did Morgan know? Nobody at News Nation seems to have asked him that. How much did the group quietly pushing Harris's nomination before Joe withdrew know? Surely Pelosi and Obama also knew which way the wind was blowing well before Joe withdrew. Why the big act, especially from Pelosi, that this wasn't what she wanted?

I think Morgan is running cover for the Democrat establishment here, which is trying to evade responsibility for Harris. Baloney. They got what they wanted.