Three months and $2 million
After President Biden’s disastrous performance at the debate with the convicted felon, a debate that I did not watch but read about in the news, I was convinced that there would be a move to replace Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee.
To begin with, I could not understand why he was up for re-election after having described himself in ways that told voters like me that he would be there for only one term. Consider this CNN report from March 2020, for example:
Former Vice President Joe Biden called himself a “bridge” to future Democratic leaders Monday night as he campaigned with Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
The nod to three people expected to be considered for the vice presidential nomination was the most direct the 77-year-old former vice president has been about how he views his role within the party.
He has long pledged to return the nation to pre-President Donald Trump normalcy. But he and his aides have declined to address whether, if elected, he would run for a second term in 2024. He has said only that he would not run again if he were in poor health.
Or this Politico report from even earlier, from December 2019:
“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”
The adviser argued that public acknowledgment of that reality could help Biden mollify younger voters, especially on the left, who are unexcited by his candidacy and fear that his nomination would serve as an eight-year roadblock to the next generation of Democrats.
By signaling that he will serve just one term and choosing a running mate and Cabinet that is young and diverse, Biden could offer himself to the Democratic primary electorate as the candidate best suited to defeat Trump as well as the candidate who can usher into power the party’s fresh faces.
“This makes Biden a good transition figure,” the adviser said.
After the midterm elections in 2022, it became clear that all that talk about transition was, well, malarkey, to use Biden’s favorite word.
Writing in the NYRB about Biden’s insistence to continue as the candidate even after the disaster of a debate, Fintan O’Toole called it a “savior complex”: “Biden’s tragedy is that he has come to feel that he alone can rescue America.”
It is kind of bizarre that both the geriatric candidates tell us that they alone can rescue America!
O’Toole writes:
When Biden gave his inaugural address it might have seemed reasonable to assume that Trump was over, that the grotesque efforts to overturn the results of the election had made it impossible for him ever to return to power. But Trump was undead and his malign potency again established him as the major predator in the American political jungle.
This in turn gave Biden a second chance at achieving something worthy of his eternal soul. He had saved America from Trump once—now he could do it again. He could banish Trump, and Trumpism, not for now but forever. If thoughts of eternity gather round the aging Catholic believer, this is Biden’s political equivalent of an undying achievement. In his inaugural address, he evoked the struggle of light against darkness. He sees the delivery of a final, fatal blow to Trump as the ultimate vanquishing of the American darkness.
Meanwhile, the rapist also sees himself as the savior.
As he put in his speech accepting the Republican nomination in 2016: “I alone can fix it.” At the heart of authoritarianism is this notion of indispensability. The leader is unique, unparalleled, irreplaceable. God has chosen him to rescue and revive the nation. That is why he cannot be constrained by laws or even by the ordinary calculations of rationality. Only in his infallible instincts and indomitable will does salvation lie.
Biden’s tragedy is that he has come to take on this same conviction, to feel that he alone can save America. In mirroring his archenemy, he has created an equal and opposite belief in his own indispensability.
Doesn’t the whole thing come across like some Shakespearean play that we are watching, except that it is not a play but real life with huge implications?
A week after the debate debacle, I set out on some serious thinking. To me, it was clear that Biden had to step aside. I relished a scenario where he quit the presidency itself, which would then make his VP, Kamala Harris, the President and, thereby, the default candidate also. But then my understanding is that in such a situation, the House has to approve the selection of a new VP and, boy will the do-nothing cantankerous and rabidly anti-democratic GOP have a field day not filling the slot. And, if perchance something happened to Harris, then Speaker Johnson becomes President Johnson?
So, I sketched out a scenario that Biden merely withdraws his candidacy and declares his full and unconditional support for Harris to be the nominee. After some murmurs and dissents, eventually the leadership and the party members approve Harris as the nominee.
The question then was about her running mate. Who will that be?
I figured that because Harris is from California, the potential VP candidate cannot be from the coasts, east or west. And, it has to be a white man in order to balance the ticket.
I went searching for a white man in the middle of the country. To borrow from Flannery O’Connor, a good man is hard to find ;)
After quickly considering and dropping the governor of Minnesota, I zoomed into the governor of Kentucky as the guy. Andy Beshear. A Democrat elected and re-elected as governor in a red state. And his deputy is also a Democrat, which means that there is no loss of power should he leave his office.
Beshear is only 46 years old but is a seasoned politician. Like Harris, he too served as the attorney general of his state. He is a church deacon.
I was sold.
I thought that maybe I could buy a domain name HarrisBeshear.com and later sell it for a chunk of money.
And that is what I did on the afternoon of Saturday, June 29th.
But, it turned out that I was late to the party. The domain name was already taken. And if one wanted it, the domain name was available for 2 million dollars!
I wondered when the domain name was sold, and the internet answered that question too:
It was registered on March 30th. Damn!
The Democratic Party’s convention is only a month away. This act of the drama will soon end with a nomination. And that will set up the third and final act.
In November, we will find out whether the play is a tragedy or a comedy.