Ten Things I Think I Think About the 2024 Presidential Race After Joe Biden's Exit

Some thoughts while everyone waits for the dust to settle.

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

Joe Biden is out. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party nominee. That is the latest insane plot development during a summer when the 2024 screenwriters have really been pulling out all the stops.

What does this mean about the state of the 2024 race? The dust has yet to settle on the past ten days, and in many ways the general election dynamics will not come into focus until after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.

Until then, I have ten thoughts — some of which are pretty banal but nonetheless worthy of mention:

1. Kamala Harris will definitely be the Democratic nominee now. So many pundits want some variation of an open mini-primary: the Washington Post’s editorial board, the New York Times’ editorial board, the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood, prominent donors. Their efforts to gin up a brokered convention are adorable, but that is not how this is playing out. In the 24 hours after Biden’s endorsement, the party pretty much coalesced around Harris. She picked up an overwhelming majority of endorsements from Democratic governors and members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi. Harris also worked the phones and secured key union endorsements as well as a majority of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention. None of the other names floated as challengers actually want to challenge Harris, unless you count Marianne Williamson or Joe Manchin — and I don’t.¹ As in February 2020, the Democratic Party has decided: it’s Kamala Harris.

2. Despite all the shocks, the race remains mostly unchanged. In the past ten days there has been an assassination attempt, multiple court rulings favorable to Trump, his choice of J.D. Vance to be his vice president candidate, and the pageantry of the Republican National Convention. Despite all that, Trump has not received much of a bump. To be sure, he’s in the lead, which is something. Still, despite a month’s worth of good news, it’s still a pretty tight race. That is mostly because Trump is a historically unpopular politician. Never forget that although Trump has a high floor of support, he also has an incredibly low ceiling.

3. Trump and the Republicans have not handled Biden’s departure well at all. Trump and his loyal lieutenants are not happy right now. The Hill’s Brett Samuels reports that, “Trump posted 10 times on Truth Social between when Biden dropped out and Monday morning, complaining it was unfair to the Republican Party to have to face a new opponent.” MAGA folks are desperately throwing shit at the wall like “coup!” to see if it will stick. Harris is far from a perfect candidate, but as the Atlantic’s Tim Alberta notes, “everything… intended for this campaign—the messaging, the advertising, the microtargeting, the ground game, the mail pieces, the digital engagement, the social-media maneuvers—was designed to defeat Joe Biden. Even the selection of Ohio’s Senator J. D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, campaign officials acknowledged, was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.” The GOP will eventually arrive at their attack lines, but their failure to mark out their themes in the first 24 hours of Harris’ campaign might come back to haunt them.

4. The campaign money is officially a wash. Back in the spring, the talk was about how Team Biden held a cash advantage. By this past weekend, however, Trump and the Republicans had caught up with Dems, erasing that advantage. However, Biden’s departure and endorsement of Harris unleashed a record wave of small money for the vice president — more than $80 million in a day. That said, I anticipate Harris’ entry will also spur more GOP fundraising. The point is, both parties will have a lot of money in the bank and will be spending it this fall.

5. Harris will be a stronger general election candidate than some might think. Kamala Harris did not run a great 2020 primary campaign, and her first years as vice president were not ideal. Her rep has been as someone who has difficulty managing staff. However, she seems to have moved down the learning curve. It’s noteworthy that her staff kept their mouths shut and handled the past month adroitly.² Biden’s endorsement obviously helped, but the speed with which Harris has consolidated support is nonetheless impressive. As previously noted, GOP efforts to attack her have been weird. Furthermore, as the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel points out, as someone who is considerably younger and more online than Trump, Harris has some opportunities to reach out to online demographics that had ben beyond the reach of Biden.³ And finally, as the Bulwark suggests, “[Harris] will carry nearly every advantage of incumbency and yet she can credibly position herself as this election’s change agent.”

6. The troglodyte arguments about Harris cut both ways. I’m sure every Harris supporter knows someone who will say something along the lines of, “I don’t have a problem with Harris but I’m not sure the country is really ready for a woman of color becoming president.” That is often code for “I actually do have a problem with a woman of color being the president.” And sure, that will be an issue. But if you start getting into the troglodyte mindset, you soon realize that this creates opportunities for Harris as well. Bear in mind that through no fault of her own Kamala Harris actually managed to fluster Barack Obama, the coolest cucumber in American politics this century, into saying something mildly inappropriate. What I am saying is that Kamala Harris is hot⁴ — and therefore might gain as many heterosexual male idiots as she loses.

7. Damned if I know who will be Harris’ VP choice. The names being bandied about — Senator Mark Kelly, Middle-Aged White Midwestern Governor — make sense. If I was in charge of Harris’ vice presidential selection instead of Eric Holder, however, I would opt for Governor Andy Beshear from Kentucky. Why? A few reasons. The first is simple opportunity costs. Other possibilities, like Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, would create problems down the road in terms of holding Kelly’s Senate set. The second reason is that if this video clip is any guide, Beshear would own J.D. Vance in a vice-presidential debate:

8. There will be several more moments of Democratic panic. I mean, have you met Democrats?! Harris is certain to commit some gaffes. Trump will have some good days. There will be dispiriting polls. This roller coaster will not end until November at the earliest.

9. It's going to take at least a week or two before the polling can be trusted. FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley and G. Elliott Morris provide an analysis of what the polls show about Harris vs. Trump. To be honest, however, I’m skeptical of the validity of those surveys. Polling about a notional candidate strikes me as way different from someone who will actually be on the ballot. Harris has barely campaigned. She is technically not the nominee yet — though that will happen sooner than we think. The point is, voters need some time to process before expressing their preferences, so I’ll wait to see what the numbers look like a week or two from now.

10. It's still a very tight race, which is why Democrats are uniting. This is the second straight election cycle in which the Democratic Party has decided and coordinated in a remarkably short period of time. But this is even more impressive than what happened in late February 2020. That coalescing behind Biden took place over a week. The movement to Harris took place in a day. As Seth Masket notes, “what we’ve seen over the past few weeks is a form of party strength that I honestly didn’t think still existed in the US — a party strong enough to remove a sitting president. US parties, even in their strong moments, have tended to be highly deferential to their presidents, even when it looked like those candidates might lose the next election (see, for example, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter). So the fact that pressure from party leaders resulted in Biden withdrawing is really quite striking.” By replacing Biden with Harris, Democrats have chosen a standard-bearer who energizes rather than enervates the party.⁵ Even if she loses — which is possible — this means that Democrats up and down the ballot are not facing a red wave scenario.

1. Neither does Manchin.

2. The absence of anonymous Biden staffers carping at Harris is also an important dog that is not barking.

3. As multiple folks have suggested, Harris should go on Hot Ones.

4. This is an eyewitness assertion. Two years ago, I was on the White House grounds to meet an NSC staffer. Purely by chance, as I was about to enter the Eisenhower building, Harris exited the West Wing to do the same, which meant I had to stand in place. She walked past me, and all I will say is that Kamala Harris is an objectively attractive woman.

5. Yes, this includes donors.