In the end, the longest weekend eventually resulted in the simplest decision: “I’m out.” On Friday afternoon, as our newspaper contemplated the potential changes that could happen over the weekend, there was a consensus of sorts: if they don’t make the call then the election is a fait accompli.
On Sunday, they made the call.
By endorsing his vice-president, Joe Biden (or whoever is making Biden’s decisions for him right now) has circumvented any discussion about who might step in to his stability sneakers, passing the baton to Kamala Harris, and praying that the shock might at least temporarily cause some consternation in the Trump camp.
Of course, it’s an open secret that Harris continues to poll badly, is a poor public speaker, and has found it difficult to gain any serious media traction since being given the hospital pass of looking after immigration.
But at least she can talk, deliver fully formed sentences and walk in a straight line. Her choice of running mate will be crucial to her potential appeal, but in the end, it will come down to her ability to appeal to enough people who have never been that interested in her, plus of course those who have never warmed to her.
How will Trump interpret all this? It was easy kicking an old white man, but how will he fare with an agile younger black woman, an agile younger black woman with the kind of agency he finds abhorrent? Trump has — after being afforded a platform by his rich father — built his position through the power, actually the acquisition, of personality. Those in his way, or who don’t subscribe to his strictures or doctrines, are not worth his time or attention.
He has never considered or interpreted intellectual growth or humanistic expertise as anything other than an unnecessary divergence, and he’s not going to start now. Kamala Harris in his eyes is nothing but roadkill, although her political acumen now might not be as important as what she means for America — right now, the only stumbling block between him and the presidency.
She is also someone who has a lot to prove, someone who will be focused acutely on winning over those huge swathes of people — media, business and public alike — who have never thought she was up to the task, and who think she was chosen to be Biden’s running mate simply for expedient and rather banal reasons.
Jamie Harrison, the chair of the Democratic Party, has promised that the process to replace President Biden as their candidate would be “transparent and orderly”. Harrison said that everyone in his party was focused on how best to defeat Trump. “This process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the party,” he wrote on X yesterday. “Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.”
Donald Trump’s reaction to the news of Biden stepping down was predictably adolescent, posting on his Truth Social platform: “Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve — and never was!” One might have hoped for a more magnanimous response, but then the world is constantly disappointed by Trump’s inability to let an opportunity quietly close itself down.
The Republican nominee is like the boy who watches his enemy fall through the ice on the lake, and who punches the air rather than trying to rescue him. In the last week, we have looked carefully at Trump and wondered whether his brush with death might have caused him to reconsider the concepts of empathy or humility; his response to the president’s decision to step down simply reinforces our worst fear: nuance is for losers.
Nuance is perhaps what the Democrats need least right now, as their foe has reduced the race to a simple cartoon. Twenty-four hours ago, the race for the White House was a battle between wealth and health, a fight between strength and weakness, between an ability to walk and an inability to acknowledge compassion. Today it is a tussle between vultures and anything in their way. And right now, that anything happens to be Kamala Harris.
Bring it on, as Trump might have said.
