Democrats, fear not an open convention, for your sake
In 1924, Democrats convened in New York for what became history’s longest presidential nominating convention. With 103 ballots over 16 days, they selected former congressman and ambassador John W. Davis. He was shellacked by President Calvin Coolidge (382 to 136 in the electoral college).
A century later, Democrats face what seems to, but should not, rattle them: the prospect of an old-fashioned deliberative convention, rather than a modern one that merely ratifies decisions taken in states’ primaries and caucuses. President Joe Biden, in what we may hope is the last irresponsible act of his irresponsibly prolonged public career, has said, in effect, to convention delegates and voters: If you enjoyed my presidency (polls indicate that an American majority has not enjoyed it), I urge the convention to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris. So, let’s recapitulate the Democrats’ path into today’s political cul-de-sac.
Biden’s 1988 presidential quest foundered five months before the Iowa caucuses. In 2008, he lasted until Jan. 3, finishing fifth in Iowa with less than 1 percent of the vote. In 2020, following dismal results in Iowa (fourth) and New Hampshire (fifth), he limped into South Carolina, where 56% of Democratic primary participants would be Black and he could leverage his party’s established religion — identity politics. He promised a Black female Supreme Court justice. And for a running mate, he wound up with Harris, whose futility in national politics had already been Bidenesque.
Her candidacy for the 2020 nomination sputtered to extinction 62 days before Iowans cast the first selection votes. Her only memorable moment was when she accused Biden of insufficient enthusiasm for an unpopular and unproductive social policy: forced busing in pursuit of racially balanced public schools. Perhaps even when Biden chose her, he could not remember this insult.
An English person once said of another, “He has risen without a trace.” If only that could be said of Harris, the helium candidate, lighter than air. The eerie strangeness of her public maunderings will live as long as YouTube enables the savoring of her streams of semiconsciousness about space, school buses, broadband in Louisiana, Poland and NATO’s northern flank, nations working together by working together, the border (“We have a secure border”) and equity (“Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place”).
Perhaps delusions of adequacy disincline her to prepare, or even think, before speaking. Democratic delegates who convene in Chicago should think before possibly handing to her the nuclear launch codes. And they should read their party’s Rule 13.J: “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them” (emphasis added). Shall, not may. It is a duty.
And spare us doubly silly sermons about how Biden’s delegates consented to him, and are his property to dispose of. The noun “consent” comes with an implicit adjective preceding it: “informed.” Voters who supported Biden in primaries were misinformed by him and his party about something germane: his evaporating faculties.
Ira Gershwin nailed it: “The age of miracles hadn’t passed.” Miraculously, the Democratic Party, although increasingly defined by its off-putting progressive minority, contains a slew of plausible presidents: governors Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Jared Polis of Colorado and, especially, former Rhode Island governor and current Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. They are executives who have run things (states) larger than a Senate office. (Remember this column’s inexplicably forgotten proposal for a constitutional amendment: “No senator or former senator shall be eligible to be president.”)
Today, however, two bruited names are governors unsuited to lead this embarrassed nation, which has suffered enough: Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, who is as rich as Donald Trump pretends to be, and could finance his campaign. And California’s
Gavin Newsom, who should constantly murmur “Thank God for Illinois,” the only state more disastrously misgoverned than his.
After Biden’s most epic pratfall (plagiarizing, in 1987, a British politician’s autobiography), he said, clairvoyantly, “I’ve done some dumb things, and I’ll do dumb things again.” Perhaps his latest was clever dumbness — vengeance of Shakespearean subtly. To the many Democrats — former colleagues — who forced his withdrawal, he proffers Harris’s candidacy, giving it whatever momentum his endorsement imparts. He could be saying: “You ingrates deserve this.”
The Democratic Party now has an opportunity to make partial amends for Biden’s 2024 candidacy. It has, however, done some dumb things, and will do others.