Jul. 23—Coronations seldom work out better than competitions. Wire a job for an insider, and chances are the best choice was bypassed.
For that reason alone, Donald Trump has reason to believe bumbling by Democrats will return him to the White House.
The opposition fouling up is Trump’s only hope. He is a weak candidate, twice an overwhelming loser in the popular vote for president.
But Trump won the presidency in 2016 by besting an even weaker candidate in Hillary Clinton. She lost eight of nine swing states. Her collapse in the hardest-fought places was enough for Trump to win the Electoral College, the only scorecard that mattered in the end.
Democrats have ignored this recent history in the excitement over President Joe Biden‘s withdrawal from this year’s election. That decision was 81-year-old Biden’s first smart move of the campaign.
As Biden bowed out, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, putting her on the fast track to being crowned as the Democratic nominee.
But in this rush to judgment, have party big shots replaced Biden with their most electable candidate? Is Harris the Democrat who’s most capable of winning the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona?
A then-vigorous Biden carried all those states except North Carolina in 2020. Harris will need a similar showing if she is to end Trump’s political career.
Democrats would have improved their chances by creating a more favorable head-to-head matchup against Trump. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would have been more formidable than Harris. Whitmer would have won her own state, as well as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Democratic nominee has to take all three if the party is to hold the White House.
In addition, Whitmer might have been charismatic enough to press Trump in Ohio, once a swing state that has turned red.
We won’t know until November if anointing Harris was a winning strategy, just as we won’t know if Harris would have won the nomination at a brokered Democratic National Convention in August.
Competition in a pressure-packed arena would have been best for the Democratic Party and hardest on Trump. His personal attacks would have been delayed until Democrats selected their nominee in a competition instead of another canned convention.
If Harris won under those conditions, no one would doubt her ability to whip Trump in November. She was anything but a stellar campaigner when she declared herself a candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president.
Hurting for money and absent any momentum, Harris quit the race in December 2019, two months before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Harris had knocked Biden as an antiquated politician who opposed federally mandated school busing to foster desegregation. Her screed didn’t hurt Biden, nor did it impress voters.
Biden was the right candidate to defeat Trump in 2020. Voters said so when they gave him a series of resounding victories on Super Tuesday. The electorate spoke even more loudly in the general election when Biden flipped five states that had gone to Trump in 2016.
Why Biden chose Harris as his running mate was always a mystery. She demonized him when they were opponents in the primary campaign. She comes from California, a state Biden easily would have won without her on the ticket. Harris was a prosecutor. Biden was a public defender.
Biden still decided to make Harris a national figure. She grabbed his coattails and hung on. It was the easiest climb to the executive branch Harris could have imagined.
At this stage, Harris is a superior candidate to Biden. Whether she should be handed the Democratic presidential nomination is a different kettle of fish.
Republicans are better than Democrats at creating the right matchup in presidential races. Ronald Reagan wasn’t a student of government or a hard worker. But Reagan could read a teleprompter, reel off phony stories about welfare queens and look more presidential than Jimmy Carter.
George W. Bush, with little to commend but his father’s surname, outpointed intellectually curious Al Gore. This was possible because Gore would enter a room packed with likely voters and bore them for 30 minutes with a lecture on chlorofluorocarbons.
Harris wasn’t the Democrats’ best choice to defeat Trump. That won’t matter if she wins.
If Harris loses, Democrats for the second time in eight years will have to live with a hard truth: They empowered Trump by choosing poorly.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.
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