Who... and What?

Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the Presidential race seemed inevitable after his disastrous debate performance, post-debate posturing notwithstanding. Indeed, it seemed an act of cruelty on the part of his wife, son, and whoever else has his ear to persist in propping him up. Both going into and after the debate, for it is now obvious that a whole lot of people knew of Biden's mental decline but persistently lied to the American public about it.

Those who are shocked, shocked! by his withdrawal really do need to get outside their echo chambers and past their self-delusions and ponder their denial of reality. The rest of us sit with bated breath and buckets of popcorn to see what unfolds in the next few weeks.

• Will Kamala Harris be the nominee?

In her favor, she has exclusive use of over $90M in campaign war chest. She has the widest national name recognition. Biden endorsed her, as have many other prominent Democrats. She checks several identity boxes, and it will be difficult for a party obsessed with identity politics to select someone who is not a black woman to replace her.

On the other hand, she has no accomplishments as VP to point at, she has a reputation of spouting meaningless word salad and laughing (cackling, if we are to be honest) inappropriately whenever she's jammed up by a question or comment, polls poorly against Trump despite the widespread dislike of Trump on the Left, and has been throughout her career a political weathervane. Obama’s decision not to endorse her is a big slap in the face and a bigger signal to the Democratic Party.

The third consideration is - who might run against her? What are the other options? Anyone who throws his or her hat in the ring risks losing to Trump in the general election and thus forever being tarnished by that. Meaning that whoever wants in has to be willing to accept this as their only shot at the Presidency. Many will, in my opinion, read those tea leaves and bid their time until 2028. It’s interesting to see that several potential alternatives have already endorsed her, and only Joe Manchin, who recently left the party, is suggesting he might throw his hat in the ring. But, it’s early.

• Who would she select as running mate?

There are half a dozen names already being floated, but count on it being someone from one of the must-win states. At present, the critical states in this race are Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Dems likely need all three to keep the White House, and I'd not be surprised if she tapped either PA Governor Josh Shapiro or MI Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer would make for an all-woman ticket, which would play well to the identitarians and might win enough suburban soccer moms to matter, and Shapiro is popular at home and would stand a good chance of tipping PA blue.

• Will Joe serve out his term, or make Harris the first woman President by resigning?

This is the most intriguing question of all, to me. By stepping down, Biden would give Harris over three months as President, and thus both the power of incumbency and the opportunity to preview what her full term would look like. If the Dems have high confidence in her ability to lead, they'd push for that. But, if they fear that she'll be unmasked as not-ready-for-primetime by those three months, they'll tell Joe to stick it out and hide Kamala in the basement.

The other big question, for me at least, is policy. We have a good idea of what Trump 2.0 will look like, and we knew that a second Biden term would be more of the same policies as his first term. But, we can't yet know what a Harris presidency would bring. Would she continue Biden-era policies? Would she be just another figurehead atop a hidden political machine, as Biden clearly has been? Would she take the nation down a different path? Would she move further left, or step back from the progressive agenda that is as unpopular outside the deep blue cities as Biden himself is?

Alas, I fear that I won't get much about policy in the next few weeks. The scrum in the Democratic Party is going to be about electability, and that will be judged on personality, not policy. What Harris or other aspirants would do will matter less than which of them stands a better chance against the Orange Juggernaut.

I'll save my predictions for a future article. But, I will close with a partial "told ya so." This past September, I predicted that Trump would ignore his challengers and coast to a nomination, and that Biden would drop out of the race. I figured he'd wait until after the Democratic National Convention, so that there wouldn't be a floor fight or contested nomination and so that party insiders could pick his successor, but the debate disaster accelerated that timetable to something potentially more perilous for the Dems, so my timing was off. But, I didn't have his debate performance to factor into those predictions. New information changes the landscape, and the landscape is changing as rapidly as Pompeii in 79 AD.