D-for Debate Day – V for Veep

If you understand it as D-day as in D for debate, President Biden’s withdrawl has to come about D plus 6, 7 or 8. That is the middle of next week.

Biden has about that little time to come to the only sensible, smart conclusion – that he has to leave the race to preserve a chance for a Democrat to retain the White House and avoid a down ballot debacle.

He has to do that next week. He doesn’t have time to burn. Democrats do not have time to indulge him clinging to the shred of a notion he can win. He can’t.

On the face of it he can still garner hesitant support as he did after meeting with Democratic governors. He’s the president. It is hard to say no to presidents.

After the meeting the governors sent out a delegation of Tim Walz of Minnestoa, Wes Moore of Maryland, and Kathy Hochul of New York.

They said we have to win and he is leading us. But they left space. They did. After all, they are politicians. They know how to say what they need to but leave space for more being said another time, saying for now this and that and that and this and the other thing too.

Ah but Jill Biden is all in, she is his key advisor and she is an immovable object. So they say. So we are told.

Jill Biden’s immitation of Marie Antoinette, unfortunately coinciding with her appearance on the cover of Voge wearing a $5,000 designer outfit, kind of discordantly underscoring the point.

Hunter Biden counseling his father at Camp David? This has to stop. He’s the president’s son. If he want to help he will stay away from the presidency, not be an ever present reminder of himself around it.

Jill Biden sleeps with the president every night they are under the same roof, not the political cognoscenti, not the donors, not the editorial writers and not the voters.

The last person he talks to at night and the first one he sees in the morning is Jill Biden. He married her nearly 50 years ago. But no one ever voted for her, no one ever elected her. It is unfortunate the President’s family can be most discordant and not a help. He has never seen it or seemed to want to let himself see it.

The president’s base writes comments on NY Times stories and the like all the time. They are his base and they are almost universally insistent he must leave the race and equally determined to say that Jill Biden needs to butt out.

Listen to your base Mr. President.

If you recall reading a post here immediately the night of the debate, it predicted the next spate of public polls would show the president falling behind by 6 points to 8 points when they came out several days into the following week – which is now.

Today, five polling days after the debate, the New York Times/Sienna survey shows Biden trailing Trump by 6, Trump at 49, his highest polling score ever.

What will happen? That is up to Joe Biden and to a degree, too large a degree, Jill Biden.

But let’s hypothesize and say he does do what has to be done and quits the race next week, then who.

Leading the pack are of course Vice President Harris. Then there are the governors of whom the most often mentioned are Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Kramer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and perhaps Wes Moore of Maryland.

Gov. Kramer said just this week she does not want to run and will not. Gov. Shapiro is a damn good savvy governor but has only been in that job for 18 months and has no national profile. Gov. Moore also has been on the job for all of 18 months. He is Black. It should not matter because he is a really good governor and a super communicator, but this country is not ready for an all-Black top ticket. Like Shapiro, Moore is little known in the nation.

Some have mentioned Hakeem Jeffries, a consumate man of the House. His ambition is to be Speaker. That is a very different kind of political ambition from the presidency. His focus this year, every two years will be on the Speakership. He will be a good one but he won’t be president.

Gov. Newsom is from California and so from the standpoint of people not from California, wildly liberal. He has a substantial national profile but it is sharply divisive.

Would sane Democrats stop or try to stop the first Black woman vice president with a white opponent, especially a white man? And that in a year when there is a small but reportable crack in the solidity of the Black vote for the Democratic President? Good luck with that. It would be political harikiri.

Then there is Kamala Harris, the vice president. Well as a presidential candidate, let’s face it, she bombed. In a game of musical chairs to choose a Black woman running mate, which circumstances and Biden had locked himself into in 2020, she was ultimately the likely if not necessarily most wanted choice. Things did not improve in her first year and some months as Veep.

Then they got better and now they are much better. Biden and his people coached her and finally began to let her do real things, here and in Europe and on the world stage.

She has stepped forward as a powerful, focused camapaigner, especially on women’s rights and choice. If two years ago she got a C-, today she gets an A. It is that stark an improvement and, in making it, she has demonstrated she can learn and grow in capacity and vision.

So – so if the president withdraws it has to be Harris because she has grown immensley and has seen the presidency from inside – she can step into all his administration has been doing without missing a step, here or abroad.

The campaign is sitting on $227 million. Legally it was given to and belongs to the Biden-Harris campaign. If Biden steps aside then it belongs to her and no one else. Who else can raise that in a month or less, who would want to run the fool’s errand of trying to divide major Democratic donors so late on the election calendar?

A contest pitting several candidates against her would be a food fight to and through the Convention in Chicago in late August, a congregation pointing toward a political conflagration just two months before the election.

It would be a convention with no idea what to do to choose a candidate from among serveral. It was not convened for that purpose. It was convened to coronate, not to choose.

The coverage of a contested convention? Well, if you are old enough to remember the 1968 Democratic National Convention you know it would be ugly and all the more so for taking place 56 years later in the same city, Chicago.

Such a week will be replete with TV clips from 1968, savage Fox lies, on-line distortions, and could very possibly feature Pro-Palestinian actors taking up the role of the Yuppies.

Big food fights leave a mess. The mess of such a Democratic National Convention would be impossible to clean up this year, next year, for how many years?

The only way to head it off? If not Biden it can only be Harris.

Of course, if she wins she will run in 2028 as an incumbent. But that is years off and this political D-Day is upon Democrats.

If Harris becomes the presidential nominee, she’ll need someone to take her spot. Who then would she choose to run with? No one particularly has looked at that. It’s time now.

Trump could very well have been ghosting everyone with his final three. It was and is entirely possible he’ll choose someone else. Why? Because he’s crazy and likes to do crazy thing for the shock and ratings values. He as much as said so, this first week in July with a Trump convention starting July 15, that his choice is on hold while the Dems are in this fix.

It should be observed that every day they are caught up in this drama is a day miserable deranged orange colored Trump gets a free pass.

We do know that Harris or if not Harris, someone else has to be at the vice presidential debate with someone to be nominated by Trump for vice president. That is supposed to happen in late July. But aleady it is July isn’t it? Oh dear!

What someone we don’t know yet should debate what other someone we don’t know yet in about three weeks? Think of it like that because, well that’s where it is. Some year.

Then who should Harris choose if she gets to choose?

• A white man. Has to be if a Black woman goes to the top of the ticket.
• Someone from one of the six or seven contested states.
• Someone with a meaningful national profile because it is late to start introducing someone on the national stage.
• Message to Newsom, constitutionally it can’t be someone from California
• Someone who is not and didn’t want to be in mix for president after Biden but now has to answer this national call to service.
• Someone who does not raises hackles,who is perceived as a good guy, a liberal moderate who does not say bad words in public because he is a civil man with manners.
• Someone with meaningful federal political and governmental experience.

Question: So who? Who is the someone no one has mentioned but they better start thinking about, the someone who fits all of the above criteria?

Answer: Sen. Mark Kelly, who happens to hold the Arizona senate seat once held by John McCain – which would be noticed in a big, good way should he be the Veep candidate.

Arizona is in play. He is in the first third of a first full term and if Harris/Kelly were to win then a Democratic governor would name a Democratic successor to Kelly in the Senate but if they lost he would still be a senator for at least four years.

He is, and we all know it, a former astronaut.

Everyone likes astronauts. Outside of and never mind politics, astronauts are known – and liked.

Everyone mostly knows about his wife, Gabby Giffords, and how their story speaks to love, loyalty, compassion, and strength that all add up to one word – character. He has it, they have it together. It is another reason and another way the country knows Sen. Kelly and their work together for gun control.

From what we know about him, he’d resist. He doesn’t want the presidency or the vice presidency and all that stuff. But he has always answered the nation’s call. He answered it to be a combat pilot, answered it becoming an astronaut, and when a bullet ended his wife’s political career he stepped forward to service in the Senate.

If Harris issues a call to him to seek the vice presidency will he answer it? I am certain he will.

So, if Harris gets to lead her ticket it will be common, political, and decent right sense to prevail on Mark Kelly to join her. He is the best choice. He is, far and away, the only choice.