(L-R) Vice President Humphrey with LBJ and General Creighton Abrams (facing away), head of MACV, the US forces in Vietnam in a National Security Council Meeting. Interestingly, no similarly dramatic images exist of Kamala Harris in deliberations with Joe Biden.
Throughout 2024 the Democratic Party has been caught in a Catch 22, which is that while it was increasingly difficult to conceal President Joe Biden’s declining mental capacity and physical presence, acknowledging this fact would open up a Pandora’s box of backbiting and recriminations from the different factions of the party. Many speculated that scheduling the first presidential debate for June 27, the earliest it has ever been scheduled during an election cycle, was to allow the Democrats the opportunity to sideline Biden if necessary.
However, most of the media was still playing coy with the idea that the debate could be a trap for Donald Trump. As most people realized within seconds of tuning into the debate, Biden (or whoever made the arrangement) had set a trap for Biden. His performance that night was so devoid of the energy, coherence, and connection to reality that the public would expect from a presidential candidate, let alone a sitting president like himself, that the response was an almost immediate panic among Democratic higher ups and sympathetic media. Still afterward, even though it was possibly the worst debate performance in presidential history, there were many that maintained that Biden dropping out would be worse for his party than staying in. Up until last week Biden was even thumbing his nose at angry donors and Super PAC contributors withholding their money, thinking he could force them to support him. Yet it was their pressure, not that of the voters, that ultimately took the wheels off the Biden campaign and put it up on blocks. Progressive media figure, and failed former presidential challenger, Cenk Uygur had made the prediction this would be how Biden gets forced out right after the debate.
The last time that a sitting president eligible for re-election had opted not to was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson dropped his candidacy in March as a result of flagging primary results. Many have analogized Biden’s situation to Johnson’s, but it is actually very unfair. Lyndon Johnson became president when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Whatever one believes about a conspiracy to kill JFK, Johnson took over a nation in mourning and had a very active and successful presidency from a Democratic standpoint, instituting the Great Society program of social welfare benefits and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson was a masterful legislator and a truly formidable rival of JFK during the 1960 Democratic presidential nominating process. He was fully in control one inaugurated, but events got the better of him from the Vietnam quagmire to the series of race riots that erupted and reached their zenith in 1967. By contrast, Biden always seemed to be a figurehead who nodded along as his cabinet officials like Antony Blinken and Pete Buttigieg, legislative allies like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and worst of all his corrupt family members handled the big details of his presidency.
Backing out as late as he did, Biden denied his party the proper nominating process as incumbents are rarely subjected to a true challenge. He only had to face token opposition from the bizarre Marianne Williamson and a little known Minnesota congressman named Dean Phillips. The greatest threat to his renomination had been from campaigns by the leftist activist wing of the party to vote “Uncommitted” as a protest against him over US support for Israel in the Gaza War in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In 1968 there was a lively nomination process that included formidable options like senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Sr, unfortunately ending with the latter’s assassination on June 5 in Los Angeles. As a result the Democratic nomination was decided via a contested convention between party insiders serving as delegates, and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey won the nomination. At the time he represented the pro-Vietnam War wing of the party. But Humphrey at least had run a campaign during the primaries and earned the votes of some of the Democratic faithful. The closest VP Kamala Harris has come to that was in 2019 when she contested the open primary. She had one brief moment in the sun when she lambasted Biden on his past opposition to school integration which caused for her a spike in polling. (Watching that clip below, one can see just how vigourous Biden was five years ago compared to today.)
After that confrontation her supporters known as the #KHive bought into the idea that Harris was the right standard bearer for the moment, a female member of a minority group who could be the perfect foil for Donald Trump. But Harris’s rocket soon fell back to earth when during the next debate rival candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) launched successful direct attacks against Harris’s records on criminal justice and foreign policy. Harris’s poll numbers soon cratered and she dropped out in December 2019 before the Iowa Caucus because her top staffers were defecting to Michael Bloomberg’s campaign.
If Harris ends up being the nominee, the Trump campaign would do well to talk with Gabbard or another former Democrat in order to game plan some weaknesses of hers ahead of any new debates.
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You ma'am are no Hubert Humphrey
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Throughout 2024 the Democratic Party has been caught in a Catch 22, which is that while it was increasingly difficult to conceal President Joe Biden’s declining mental capacity and physical presence, acknowledging this fact would open up a Pandora’s box of backbiting and recriminations from the different factions of the party. Many speculated that scheduling the first presidential debate for June 27, the earliest it has ever been scheduled during an election cycle, was to allow the Democrats the opportunity to sideline Biden if necessary.
However, most of the media was still playing coy with the idea that the debate could be a trap for Donald Trump. As most people realized within seconds of tuning into the debate, Biden (or whoever made the arrangement) had set a trap for Biden. His performance that night was so devoid of the energy, coherence, and connection to reality that the public would expect from a presidential candidate, let alone a sitting president like himself, that the response was an almost immediate panic among Democratic higher ups and sympathetic media. Still afterward, even though it was possibly the worst debate performance in presidential history, there were many that maintained that Biden dropping out would be worse for his party than staying in. Up until last week Biden was even thumbing his nose at angry donors and Super PAC contributors withholding their money, thinking he could force them to support him. Yet it was their pressure, not that of the voters, that ultimately took the wheels off the Biden campaign and put it up on blocks. Progressive media figure, and failed former presidential challenger, Cenk Uygur had made the prediction this would be how Biden gets forced out right after the debate.
The last time that a sitting president eligible for re-election had opted not to was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson dropped his candidacy in March as a result of flagging primary results. Many have analogized Biden’s situation to Johnson’s, but it is actually very unfair. Lyndon Johnson became president when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Whatever one believes about a conspiracy to kill JFK, Johnson took over a nation in mourning and had a very active and successful presidency from a Democratic standpoint, instituting the Great Society program of social welfare benefits and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson was a masterful legislator and a truly formidable rival of JFK during the 1960 Democratic presidential nominating process. He was fully in control one inaugurated, but events got the better of him from the Vietnam quagmire to the series of race riots that erupted and reached their zenith in 1967. By contrast, Biden always seemed to be a figurehead who nodded along as his cabinet officials like Antony Blinken and Pete Buttigieg, legislative allies like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and worst of all his corrupt family members handled the big details of his presidency.
Backing out as late as he did, Biden denied his party the proper nominating process as incumbents are rarely subjected to a true challenge. He only had to face token opposition from the bizarre Marianne Williamson and a little known Minnesota congressman named Dean Phillips. The greatest threat to his renomination had been from campaigns by the leftist activist wing of the party to vote “Uncommitted” as a protest against him over US support for Israel in the Gaza War in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In 1968 there was a lively nomination process that included formidable options like senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Sr, unfortunately ending with the latter’s assassination on June 5 in Los Angeles. As a result the Democratic nomination was decided via a contested convention between party insiders serving as delegates, and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey won the nomination. At the time he represented the pro-Vietnam War wing of the party. But Humphrey at least had run a campaign during the primaries and earned the votes of some of the Democratic faithful. The closest VP Kamala Harris has come to that was in 2019 when she contested the open primary. She had one brief moment in the sun when she lambasted Biden on his past opposition to school integration which caused for her a spike in polling. (Watching that clip below, one can see just how vigourous Biden was five years ago compared to today.)
After that confrontation her supporters known as the #KHive bought into the idea that Harris was the right standard bearer for the moment, a female member of a minority group who could be the perfect foil for Donald Trump. But Harris’s rocket soon fell back to earth when during the next debate rival candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) launched successful direct attacks against Harris’s records on criminal justice and foreign policy. Harris’s poll numbers soon cratered and she dropped out in December 2019 before the Iowa Caucus because her top staffers were defecting to Michael Bloomberg’s campaign.
If Harris ends up being the nominee, the Trump campaign would do well to talk with Gabbard or another former Democrat in order to game plan some weaknesses of hers ahead of any new debates.
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