Can Democrats who abandoned Biden be trusted to back Harris?

Now that Joe Biden has decided to drop out of the running, there is a huge, urgent push among liberals and Democrats to get on board the Kamala Harris train. While I have said from the beginning that if it’s not the president, it’s the vice president, I think it’s important to say that this was a serious mistake. I just hope it’s not a fatal one.

It’s a serious mistake because the likelihood of Donald Trump winning this election has shot up by orders of magnitude. Yes, I know what Biden’s critics said. They said he was already on track to losing. But they didn’t really know that, nor did anyone when it comes to knowing the future. What we do know is history. An incumbent, even a very old incumbent who had a disaster debate, has advantages over his challenger, even a very old one who used to be the president. Biden, moreover, has an amazing record. Plus, the fundamentals are sound. No incumbent has lost with a national economy as sizzling as ours.

Moreover, Biden’s critics didn’t have more than vibes to make their case. To be sure, they had polls, but there are many polls. You can find one to prove anything, including why Biden should have stayed. Up to the moment he dropped out, 538’s forecast said he had an even chance of winning – an even chance, despite weeks of merciless scrutiny. If there was internal campaign polling that showed damage hitherto unknown, we never saw it. The best we got, in terms of reasons why the president should drop out, came from a few dozen Democrats who said, more or less, trust us. That might have been convincing if it weren’t for the suspicion that they were covering their own asses.

When you look back at this episode, please remember it wasn’t the Washington press and pundit corps that pushed him out. It was his own party. Even otherwise superlative leaders like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went soft. They could have done what the Republicans do for their nominee – gotten behind him no matter what. Trump is a fraud, an insurrectionist, rapist and criminal, but I guess Joe Biden looking old for 90 minutes was beyond the pale. There’s now a huge, urgent push to get on the Harris train. But let’s not forget how little it took – vibes! – for some of these Democrats to abandon Biden. Can these same Democrats be trusted to stick with the vice president?

This is important to ask, because the vice president, as they say, is about to go through some things. If you thought being geriatric was a liability for Biden, just wait until Donald Trump, the Republicans and the rightwing media apparatus take aim at the country’s first biracial female Democratic Party nominee (presuming that she is formally nominated next month). Indeed, she has polled well, but that’s almost certainly because Democratic voters were themselves searching for someone they believed could be an alternative to Biden. Now that her candidacy is no longer theoretical, we’re going to see how firm that support is – or if it can be weakened by appeals to bigotry. For her to win, it’s going to take every single elected Democrat to stand up for her, loud and proud. Will they? I hope so, but why should I presume it?

I also think there’s no small amount of naivete going into the liberal and Democratic reaction to Biden dropping out. Some of us appear to believe all the media energy that went into scrutinizing Biden for each and every sign of enfeeblement will now go into scrutinizing the former president. After all, he’s 78 years old, habitually incoherent and there are lingering questions about his mental health after his attempted assassination. Some Democratic operatives have even started saying that, with Biden gone, Trump is now the oldest candidate ever.

All that makes sense, but all that presumes something – that the media energy that went into scrutinizing Biden was fair. It wasn’t. If it had been fair, there would have been equal time given to Trump’s performance during the disaster debate. That didn’t happen. The press and pundit corps barely remembered he was there. Neither did the elected Democrats who abandoned the president. Trump was a firehose of lies. He practically said the election is legitimate only if he wins. His statements were bowls of word salad. But they only had eyes for Biden. Why would we think the same standard applies to Trump?

I expect that, by the end of the week, it’s going to be clearer to liberals and Democrats that whatever problems we thought we had under Biden are going to be matched evenly, at the very least, by a new set of problems under Harris. And that set of problems will become quite familiar, as they were the same set of problems the party faced under Hillary Clinton – precisely, getting swing voters in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to vote for a woman, this time a biracial woman. Biden had a path through those states, even amid the crisis. Does Harris? I hope so, because if she loses one, she’s done.