‘Harris and the Democrats can and should hammer the point that the Harris ticket is a ticket for the future while the Trump-Vance combination is a ticket for the past.’
AND so it came to pass: Joe Biden becomes only the third US President since World War 2 to forego seeking a second term, following in the footsteps of Harry S. Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968.
Interestingly, Truman and Johnson, like Biden, were Democrats. With Truman and Johnson out of the picture, the Democrats had rowdy conventions to find their replacements, while it was the Republicans (Eisenhower in 1952 and Nixon in 1968) who won the elections for president.
It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that history will repeat itself, as easy a conclusion to jump to as did so many who said that the elections were over after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. But as things turned out, Joe Biden came down with COVID-19, which added to the clamor within his party that he stepped aside, and that is exactly what he did, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.
So it’s now a whole new ballgame with Trump now being the only old man in the race for the presidency; it also pits an ex-prosecutor against a convicted felon. And for the women voters and the mixed-race voters of America, it gives them a chance to elect one of their own in what will be a history-making election.
History buffs and students of US Presidential politics can tell you that many of the parallels between Biden and Johnson and Truman end on several points. First: the Democratic National Convention of 2024 will not be contested the way the conventions of 1952 and 1968 were. In 1952, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois had to fight to become the standard bearer of his party, while in 1968 a fractured Democratic Party finally settled on Johnson’s vice president, Huber Humphrey, to be its standard bearer after a messy fight. These are not the cases for 2024 as Harris has already sewn up enough endorsements from former Biden delegates to guarantee her first ballot victory.
Second, the Republican rivals were far more “esteemed.” Stevenson was up against Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of the European theater of war of World War 2, while Humphrey was up against former Vice President Richard Nixon whose Watergate scandal was still five years in the future. Harris, on the other hand, is up against an aging and sometimes rambling Donald Trump who is also so repulsive to some members of the Republican Party that they have openly said they could never vote for him.
Third, this being the 21st Century, it may help rather than hurt Harris that she would be the second female to be nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.
And she can ride on the passions unleashed by the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision to galvanize women voters behind her, the way they didn’t unite behind Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Fourth, there’s the matter of Trump’s legal woes, which Harris as a former prosecutor can hammer on. Last but not least, Harris and the Democrats can and should hammer the point that the Harris ticket is a ticket for the future while the Trump-Vance combination is a ticket for the past.
Three weeks after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, it’s a whole new ballgame with changed dynamics for November. Place your bets!
(I already have: for me, it’s “Go Blue!”)
