David Axelrod is now the most influential Democrat to date to have called for Joe Biden to reconsider his run for reelection. But in doing so last weekend, he did the same thing that pretty much every other Democrat has done. Which is to say, he refused to acknowledge the party’s real problem.
The real problem isn’t Biden. It’s Kamala Harris.
Biden is certainly borderline comatose, his brain a clump of blackened rot, but I truly believe there are enough synapses still flickering inside for him to be aware that he can’t and shouldn’t be running for a second term. He knows he’s too old. He knows his tenure has been a wreck. And he knows that with each passing day he’s in office, nothing is getting better, and everything is getting worse.
But what he also knows is if he says he withdraws from the campaign, the only option party leadership has is to back his vice president. What’s the opposite of “brilliant”?
To be sure, there would technically be other, better options, like Gavin Newsom or even Dean Phillips, who is formally running against Biden. But that’s not how national party politics works. It works by protecting incumbents. Or, in the event that there isn’t one, backing the next best thing. As vice president, that’s Harris.
Compounding the problem is that Harris is one of their precious affirmative action hires, shielded from criticism by nature of being not just a woman but a Woman of Color™️. To deny
