Joe Biden Succumbs to Reason, Advances Us to a Coconut-Based Future

By Jacob Weindling  |  July 22, 2024 | 2:10pm
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Elections 2024 Election
Joe Biden Succumbs to Reason, Advances Us to a Coconut-Based Future

After one of the wildest weeks in American history, our long national nightmare is over. On Sunday, Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential election. That he did it this Sunday, and not on Thursday to try to upstage Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, was one last signal of many that Biden is simply not up to this task.

Enter Vice President Kamala Harris, the only logical choice out of this entire mess. All the fantasy booking these past few weeks was fun, but it was a dangerously donor driven delusion. If we actually were going to have a primary, this conversation needed to take place last year. The weeks since the history-altering debate have had a “never went to class, never read the book, now cramming for the final the night before” vibe to it, and exploring the Democratic Party’s id was sure to lead us down a path to nowhere good.

The past few weeks have been an object lesson in the futility of political prognostication. They are the literal example of Lenin’s quote that “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” A month ago, Donald Trump had a completely intact ear, the façade of Biden’s working brain had yet to be fully shattered, and notions of life in coconut trees were confined to children’s stories. For all we know, three months from now some of us will be shrugging our shoulders and saying, “don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.”

What will happen between now and November is anyone’s guess, but I think there are two clear takeaways from this seismic development in the presidential race.

Thank God Biden Endorsed Kamala Harris

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s hour-long livestream explaining why she was backing Biden fully convinced me that an open convention was the worst possible decision the Democratic Party could make. The deadlines to get on the ballot in a lot of states come during and after the week of the Democratic National Convention, so any kind of extended fight could result in a world where the Democratic candidate for president is not on the ballot in all fifty states.

And there was plenty of reason to believe an extended fight was possible. No clear Kamalalternative emerged and the list of names tossed out ever since the debate is long enough to fill up a CVS receipt. This coordinated push to get Biden to drop out was primarily driven by the donor class and a lot of centrists in vulnerable seats. It’s possible that they all could coalesce around a viable alternative in time to get them on the ballot, but have you met the Democratic Party? They have proven themselves to be an organization that doesn’t plan farther out than their next cable news booking.

I think an open convention would have resulted in something similar to the 2020 primary, where a few coalitions would cobble together a plurality, but none would hold a majority. The myriad potential outcomes from that dynamic tilt towards not good to extremely not good, as all of the positive scenarios rely on billionaires swallowing their pride and accepting less influence than they have now.

Either way, by far the likeliest outcome from speed-running through a primary would be a fractured and divided Democratic Party at the end of it. A lot of fun Sorkin-esque fantasy novels could have been borne from an open convention, but we already have enough of that kind of delusional thinking in the party and look where it got us. Pondering our existence in the context of all in which we live and what came before us is the only logical option here that keeps the party united.

Kamala Can Win 

Back in 2018 when I thought Joe Biden had no chance, Kamala Harris was why. I assumed he would die a death of a thousand cuts as the litany of Democratic candidates picked away at his support, with Harris taking the majority of it. When she’s on, she’s an immensely talented politician and is probably the best Democrat to attack Trump thanks to her prosecutorial flair. When she became Vice President, she seemingly got bit by a radioactive spider that didn’t know how to speak in public, but she still brought the thunder in moments, like when she slammed Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans for rewriting Florida public school history books.

She can throttle Trump. Being a normal politician is where the weird Kamala moments have risen, but when she’s on the attack, she’s as good as anyone in this party. If you pair her with a good Vice President who can better articulate whatever slapdash Democratic policy platform they come up with in the coming weeks, the party will have a formidable campaign duo. Kamala’s best talents overlap with Trump’s biggest weaknesses, and moving from sleepy Joe on the offensive to Kamala is like Team USA basketball upgrading at point guard from me to Steph Curry.

The Democratic presidential campaign has an entirely different lean now. No longer can Trump sit back behind his defenses and lob “Joe is old” mortars at the Democrats. Harris will put him on his back heels in a way Biden never could, and the fact that Trump is now the incoherent old man in the race will rear its head time and time again between now and November. That an accomplished black woman is his foil should only create endless opportunities for this reactionary group of revanchist dumbfucks to trip over their own dicks while calling half of America useless unless they are pumping out babies.

Quick fact check: Kamala Harris is not childless, she has step-children. You would think that a party so desperately dependent on the divorced male vote would be more sympathetic to step-children, but nothing will stop them from alienating everyone in their lives in their bid to convince themselves they are God’s one true messenger. In fact, Kamala Harris may not even need to go on the attack during her entire campaign, as her mere existence causes these sick little freaks to say whatever racist sexist bullshit is on their mind, and it could deliver her the election through negative polarization alone. If I ran the DNC, I’d pair her with another woman like Gretchen Whitmer and just bait the GOP into showing the world all of its worst instincts each and every day until November.

The array of potential outcomes for the Democrats and the left is so much more positive at this time today than it was yesterday, we may as well have just fallen out of a coconut tree.

 
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