It was always Harris
A Politics 101 primer on why your favorite Midwestern governor never stood a chance
It’s over before it even started: Kamala Harris has secured enough delegates for the Democratic nomination after just 36 hours in the race.
This came despite the frenzied speculation of a mini-primary, with a half-dozen candidates vying for delegates at the convention. Online politicos truly did think that non-Harris candidates might have the upper hand. On the night of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, it was Gavin Newsom, not Harris, who led in the betting markets as the most likely alternative nominee.
There’s a wild disconnect between political discourse on Twitter/X and how nomination fights play out in real life. Voters and party elites favor known quantities under normal circumstances. Unless they are politically damaged the way Mike Pence was with the Trump base after January 6th, a party’s sitting or most recent Vice President starts as the frontrunner in the next nomination battle. Now, throw in a party staring down the political abyss and there’s even less of appetite for an ugly floor fight after just having defenestrated the sitting president.
Many Substack scribes have argued that Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro may be more electable candidates on paper, but this is largely beside the point. In a compressed time window, there is no way for a candidate a third of the country doesn’t even know to make the case to delegates that they’re more campaign-ready than the sitting VP.
It’s pretty rare for a backbench Senator or Governor with no electoral experience beyond their state to capture the nomination under normal circumstances, let alone the present circumstances. Absent an epic implosion by Kamala Harris, the likes of Whitmer, Newsom, Shapiro, or Polis never stood a chance.
Consider the share of likely voters who haven’t heard of these potential presidents/VPs as of our survey this weekend, conducted post-RNC but before Biden dropped out:
Kamala Harris 1%
JD Vance 10%
Pete Buttigieg 18%
Gavin Newsom 20%
Gretchen Whitmer 25%
Josh Shapiro 32%
J.B. Pritzker 42%
JD Vance has been a bona-fide national figure for a week, and as a vice presidential nominee already better known than the Governor of California, who has been on the political stage for two decades. Vance now leads a hypothetical 2028 GOP primary with 25%, after last polling at 1% before the pick. Even momentary exposure on the ticket is worth more in terms of name recognition than being the executive of a large state.
Next on the list after Harris and Vance is Pete Buttigieg, who actually ran for president and is now in Biden’s cabinet. Oddly, Buttigieg wasn’t given much billing as a Biden successor, despite being a relatively safe pick: higher name ID, better favorables than Harris, and a national donor base. If you were looking for a non-Harris option in a pinch, you’d look to Buttigieg—and not the governors—by dint of his having run a national campaign before.
This is why I thought it would have been smart for a big-name Democrat to challenge Biden in the primaries this year. That’s not because they would have won, but they would have raised their name ID high enough to become a 2028 frontrunner, perhaps even rivaling Harris. When something like Biden’s disastrous debate performance eventually happened, they would have appeared prophetic—and had a large cache of delegates pledged to them in Chicago.
But then again, this might be an indigenously Republican view. In the GOP, the track record of previous runners claiming the nomination is strong: Reagan, Bush 41, Dole, McCain, Romney. The only recent experience Democrats have had of this is Hillary Clinton, not exactly a model to emulate. More common are VPs who were presidential also-rans—Biden, Harris—or those who surge to the nomination despite being heavy underdogs—Carter, Bill Clinton, Obama. Given this history, running as a sacrificial lamb in the Democratic primary seems decidedly less appetizing—unless of course you get picked as VP.
The thought that a non-Harris Democrat could win the nomination was always too clever by half. Yes, Harris got Biden’s endorsement and inherited his campaign infrastructure. But the underlying reason for her victory is that a short sprint prioritized exactly the kind of institutional party support that only a sitting Vice President typically has.
I think you have missed the twelve foot alligator in the room, the one with the big teeth and crushing jaws. Nominee Biden said in 2020 that he would act as a bridge to the next generation, hinting he would be a single term president. Those closest to him knew damn right well before primary season began that he had lost too much juice. Before the primary season, those insiders should then have secured Biden’s consent to withdraw, not wait until the problem of Biden’s deficits blew sky high during that first debate. The entire world witnessed the dreadful political malpractice of those who should have known better. Professionals? No, screwballs. Now those same screwballs have decided to sprinkle holy water and anoint VP Harris as the nominee, and the rest of us are apparently supposed to bow down. This situation has the stench of an inside coup, not the sweet smell of a legitimate primary process. Who knows if VP Harris is the best candidate? She has not successfully run the winnowing gauntlet of the primary season. If my memory is serving me, she has never won a single primary. So who knows if she can weather the withering and exhausting fire of a presidential campaign, with the national and global press constantly in her face and on her back. Early in her term, President Biden assigned border issues to her. How did that work out? You don’t think she will get rhetorically hit with several loads of republican buckshot for her disappearing act on the border? The drums are playing Wipeout. The alligator of incompetence is about to flay the democrats to shreds. As Casey Stengel once remarked of his hapless Mets, “Can anyone here play this game?”
To the elites of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris is the perfect presidential candidate for 2024. The vacuous, word salad spouting, inappropriate laughing, not too bright individual will clearly lose to sociopath Trump leaving the way clear for all of them (minus her unfortunate VP pick) to contest the rapist embracing Vance in ’28.