Go Ahead Harris and Pick a Female VP! Unconventional Wisdom and the 2024 US Presidential Election

 

Politics is often about conventional wisdom. Yes, such wisdom is not alway

s correct and in fact often wrong. Going into the 2024 US presidential election there are three bits of conventional wisdom being circulated.

           One Kamala Harris must pick a white Caucasian male from a swing state as her vice president.

            Two, Harris cannot select a female as vice president.

            Three, the odds are still against her, according to the polls, and that Donald Trump is still favored to win the presidency.

            Politicians, pundits, and polls often are the basis for how journalists think about campaigns and elections.  They form the orthodoxy or received wisdom for a campaign cycle.  But received or conventional wisdom often is incorrect.

            Years ago I published an article which challenged two bits of conventional wisdom in politics. One was the belief that there was a bump from the location of a national political convention in a specific state. The second was that the selection of a vice president from a particular state would enhance the ability or competitiveness of that state for the party that selected that favorite son or daughter. I examined the data back to WWII and found that in fact, conventions provided no bump for the party in that state, or for that candidate. Additionally, there was no evidence that selection of a vice presidential candidate from a particular state would enhance the ability to win that state.

            Despite the overwhelming empirical evidence, these two beliefs persist. Thus the reason why the Republicans chose Wisconsin in 2024 for the location of their convention.  Perhaps maybe that is why the Democrats picked Chicago for their convention because of its proximity to the Wisconsin media market.

            How does all this apply to 2024 and the three bits of conventional wisdom noted above?

            Since Harris became the likely Democratic Party nominee for president the focus has turned to who her vice presidential pick will be. Conventional wisdom is suggesting it has to be a person from a swing state and that it has to be a white Caucasian male. The  conventional wisdom is that a popular figure from that state will enhance the Democrats’ ability to win that state. The idea of being a white Caucasian male is to balance out the demographics of Kamla Harris.

            While the governors of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Michigan might all be amply qualified to be president, as well as Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, there's no indication that merely placing them on the ticket enhances the competitive competitiveness of those states.

            Think about it. According to many statistics, barely 40% of Americans can name the sitting vice-president. There is overwhelming political science research indicating that with one notable exception, vice presidents have little or no impact on presidential elections, and that people do not make their voting decisions for president based upon the vice presidential choice. The one notable exception 2008 when Sarah Palin was John McCain's vice presidential pick.  There is evidence that her lack of qualifications, at least according to the American public, potentially cost McCain one or two percentage points in the polls. But he was going to lose anyhow. So perhaps it really didn't matter in the end.

            If vice presidents do not matter, the demographics of the vice presidential candidate equally do not matter. This gets to the second argument that says that Harris cannot pick a female to be her vice president.

            On the one hand, if vice presidential picks don't matter, then perhaps it doesn't matter if the selection  is male or female, pick the best qualified candidate. But on the other hand in 2024 the 2024 election will decided across five or six swing states, with the choice being made by 150,000 to 200,000 voters. It is possible that who the vice-presidential candidate is might matter. And here despite conventional wisdom, it might make a lot of sense for Harris to pick a female vice presidential candidate.

            The single most important voter in American politics, are college educated suburban women. With that, it is also black women who are equally important in terms of voters. Democrats must mobilize both if they are expected to win the presidency. Harris appears to have Africa African American women and women in general. Why not consider placing a female on the ticket as vice president to even further mobilize female voters across the country. Women already are the majority of voters in the United States and there is gender gap favoring Democrats.  More heavily mobilizing the female vote makes an incredible amount of sense in many ways for Democrats much in the same way that Trump (and his selection of JD Vane as his running mate) was not about balancing out a ticket but in trying to  juice up the Trumpistas even more.

            Finally, politicians, pundits, and pollsters  are arguing that as of now, Harris is perhaps in no better situation to win the presidency  than Joe Biden was.

            That may be true as of July 22, or July 24, 2024.  But remember, polls are not predictors. They are snapshots in time and over time political  fortunes change.  Many of the famous prediction machines such as Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight often get it wrong. Back in 2016 on election day, FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton about an 80% chance of winning the election.

            Polls inform conventional wisdom. They may be accurate at a point in time. They do not always capture shifts in trajectory or shifts in campaigns. Harris's taking over from Biden resets the American presidential race. It gives her an opportunity to redefine the race to capture voters who did not like Biden but equally did not like Trump and it gives her the capacity to energize the base in ways that Biden did not.

            To challenge conventional wisdom. I would argue that Harris is much freer in whom she could select for her vice presidential pick. It doesn't necessarily have to be from a swing state. It doesn't necessarily have to be a white Caucasian male. Given the polarization in America, given the dislike for Donald Trump, and given how apparently she has already brought excitement  among many to her candidacy, conventional wisdom may be wrong in terms of her prospects this year.  Go ahead Harris—pick a female VP if you want.

 

Biden, Harris, and the Manufactured Crisis of the Corporate Media

 

Joe Biden's exit and Kamala Harris's replacement as a Democratic nominee for president changes and confuses the corporate media script in its coverage of the 2024 election.  Nothing better captures that than the coverage within the 24 hours after Biden's announcement that he was leaving the race and endorsing Kamala Harris.

            The first imperative of corporate media is to run stories to make money and maintain audiences. This includes public radio and public television. One can say that the mantra for the corporate media is “all the news fits the script,” or “ all the news that sells we tell.”  The task of the corporate media is to create news or confusion where it does not exist.  For the corporate media, because they have a narrative or script for how to do reporting, if something does not fit into that narrative or script, the reporters are confused themselves, and their confusion becomes the story.  Bad or lazy reporting is appealing to existing narratives, simply  assuming the story is one thing when it reality it had changed.

            For the last several months, the corporate media story about the 2024 presidential race was predictable. It was how Biden and Trump were going through the primaries, rolling up the delegates and  how the election would be a rematch between the two of them. The corporate media had a story and reporters simply copied that script.

            At some point the sub story began to focus upon Biden's mental capacities, but this was not until his disastrous debate with Trump in June.  Prior to that there is evidence that the corporate media knew of some of these mental problems, but chose not to cover but once that debate occurred, their narrative shifted. It became about his mental capacities and about efforts to oust him.

            With that what would happen if he's ousted, who would be his likely replacement? That story came to a head on July 21 when Joe Biden announced that he was abandoning his presidential race, freeing up his delegates and endorsing Kamala Harris. This up ended the corporate media script for coverage of the presidential race. As one listened to the news that day, the stories were about chaos, that now we  had chaos or the Democratic Party was  in chaos in terms of what would happen.

            Within less than an hour of Biden saying he was stepping down, reporters were frantic and asking, why hasn't Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama endorsed Harris? Will there be an open convention? Will Harris have enough votes or support to win the nomination? Will there be there be challengers? The reporters seem genuinely perplexed. However, the reality was that the reporter-proclaimed crisis was a manufactured crisis that resolved itself quite quickly.

            If there was chaos at all, it ended Sunday afternoon on July 21 when Biden said he was leaving the race. The  real chaos had been what would had been occurring for several weeks prior. Additionally, many of the questions that were posed by confused reporters who did not know how to make sense out of the new narrative, were quickly resolved.

            Nancy Pelosi soon endorsed Kamala Harris within 24 hours. Harris, according to AP, had enough delegates to win the Convention on the first round.  Possible challengers to Harris quickly endorsed her, and Harris set a one day record in terms of fundraising.  By the end of Monday, July 22 almost all the perplexities and problems that the corporate media reporters were raising had been resolved.

 

Where will the Double Haters Go?

 

            Now that Joe Biden is out and Kamala Harris is in as the likely Democratic nominee for president, the question is, “where will the double haters go?”

            For the last several months one of the most interesting facts about the 2024 US presidential election was that a majority of the American public did not Want to see a Biden Trump rematch. Among those who did not want to see the rematch, or a small but important group of voters often described as the double haters. These are individuals who equally disliked Donald Trump and Joe Biden as presidential candidates, depending on which poll one looked at, the double haters constituted between 15% to 20%  of the electorate.  According to the Washington Post, these double-haters are “ more likely to be younger, Hispanic or Black, and women living in larger cities or with no religious affiliation.  Among the reasons they hate both is that Trump and Biden were simply seen as too old.

            When the race was still between Biden and Trump these dual haters had several options. Option one was to hold their nose and vote for the candidate that they found least objectionable. Option two was to potentially vote for a third party candidate such as Robert Kennedy Jr. Option three would have been a decision not to vote whatsoever.

            All three of these were possible options for the double haters. For those who intended to vote and vote for a major party candidate, their choice between Trump and Biden might come down to how relatively important they viewed issues such as the economy, border security, the personalities of the two candidates, or the drama either of the candidates brought to their presidencies.

            Both Trump and Biden had calculated into their strategy what the double haters might do. They were pitching their messages to discourage these individuals from voting for the opposition, with the hope they would vote for them, or at the very least choose not to vote on Election Day.

            Biden is now out. This clearly changes the equation for the double haters. It is not clear that these voters have the same hatred for Harris, as they did for Biden. They still nonetheless hate Trump. How will they recalculate their vote?  

            Do they view Harris the same as Biden and therefore their calculation between Harris and Trump is the same.

            Is there no hatred for Harris, but still for Trump, and therefore they're more likely to vote for Harris?

            Will they still opt to vote for a third party candidate, or will they still opt to stay home on Election Day?

            Harris's entry into the race changes the race for the presidency for these voters. The profile of these voters are individuals who are more likely to vote for her than Trump.

            Trump’s campaign, which had already calculated how to address these double haters, now needs to change their campaign strategy. Candidates and campaigns have scripts and narratives and their strategies are based upon both. Harris replacing Biden changes how the Trump campaign must campaign. It gives Harris and the Democrats a new option and opportunity to reset the 2024 presidential campaign.  

    The election is down to 150,000 to 200, 000 swing voters in five or six swing states. There are certainly enough double-haters  in the critical swing states to alter the flow of the election and potentially give Harris a victory.

Joe Biden Personal Health Fraud: Why the DNC Delegates Should be Able to Vote For Whomever They Want (Because they were misled)

 

Right now the only way Joe Biden will not be the Democratic Party nominee for president will be if he makes the decision himself to leave the race and free up the delegates to vote their conscience. The reason is a party rule. A rule decided by party leaders and attendees, requiring delegates to cast their vote on the first ballot for the person they are pledged to support. 

            Assuming this to be the case, Biden would get the nomination despite the fact that more than 60% of Democrats say he should step aside from the race.  This is at the same time when increasingly many party leaders are suggesting he do the same. But consider a different option. What if pledged delegates simply refuse to  vote for Biden claiming they were misled. What would happen?

            The core of the fight between Biden and perhaps the rank and file Democrats is a question about who the political party is.  Legally the courts have been confused over this question. Is the party its elected leaders or nominees such as Joe Biden here? Is it the leadership? Is it the primary voters? Is it those who identify with the party right now?

            It  seems to be the first two are viewing themselves as the party into a conflict with the latter two, with them increasingly saying Biden should not be the nominee.

            But consider a different way of thinking about the party and thinking about the choices that voters in the primaries or caucuses made and the delegates who were selected. What if we think of the party not as the leadership but as the broader membership? Should they not have a say in the direction of their party, especially based upon information that is more recent about Biden and the state of presidential race.

            Recently I had a conversation with a  Biden delegates  to the national convention and with primary voters. I asked them what they thought about Biden's debate performance, his interview with George Stephanopoulos, and what they're seeing in terms of Biden now.   They said had they known back then when they pledged as delegates or voted for him what Biden's mental and physical conditions or acuity were they might have made different choices. Moreover, they argued that things appear to have changed in the several months since the Minnesota primary and they should now be free now to cast a ballot based not upon being bound in pledged to vote for Biden according to the rules, but based upon what they know now and whom they believe would be the best candidate to leave their party. They insisted that they were the party and  neither Biden, nor the leadership.

            These comments were interesting and that they suggested that these delegates and voters wanted to make their decisions based upon information at hand now.  What has become clear is not simply that Biden's mental acuity has declined, but that stories indicate there were efforts to cover this up and to protect Biden and conceal his condition from the public.

            His real  health status, borrowing from the field of law, is a material fact that a voter or delegate would have wanted to  know.  One could argue that when voters cast their ballots across the country for Biden, or delegates pledged for him, they did so under false pretenses. It was not just that they didn't know information about his health but they were actually misinformed or misled.

            In law this is the concepts both fraud and detrimental reliance. We act or make decisions based upon information that we are given.  Detrimental reliance can be the basis of forming contracts in the law.

         But the concept of detrimental reliance also addresses the question of honesty. What if individuals are lied to  in order to induce them to enter into a contract.  Courts will invalidate such contracts because of fraud.

            Think of a decision of a voter to cast a ballot as a form of a contract. Or conversely, think of the same when it comes to a delegate. They voted or pledged for a candidate based upon information at hand. But what if they were lied to? What if fraud were committed? Should they nonetheless be still bound by that candidate  or by their pledge?  There should there be grounds to argue that their pledge or vote was made under false pretenses and the delegates should not be bound to their pledge according to party rules.

            What if then, the delegates simply chose not to support Biden. Is there a moral and legal argument to support them? Clearly Yes.

            If they were to choose not to support him what would happen next? Would the courts intervene and forced the delegates to adhere to the party rules? Unlikely. The Supreme Court has said that internal party matters are protected by the First Amendment and that generally, the court should not interfere in what happens. Were the delegates to the DNC simply to say they are no longer going to support Biden because of either change circumstances that makes supporting him no longer seem tenable or because they pledged for him under false pretenses, it does not appear that anything would prevent them from doing that.

            They delegate should be considered the party and should be free to do what they think they should be done in the best interest of the party and in furtherance of putting forward a candidate who they best believe can compete in November.

Vice–President Harris Should Invoke the 25th Amendment to Relieve Biden of his Presidential Duties

Biden had a terrible debate.  Everyone knows that except for him.  Polls suggest collapsing support for Biden among voters in the critical swing states but also in places such as New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia.  There is panic and pressure among donors for him to halt his presidential race, release his delegates, and let someone else run.  So far Biden has resisted these calls.

            But assume this happens. Assume Biden is unfit to continue his presidential candidacy.  Forcing him off the presidential ticket implicates another question–is he fit to continue as president and should Vice-President Harris and the cabinet invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and relieve him of his presidential duties?

            So far the focus of Biden’s debate performance has been on whether he should continue his presidential campaign.  Stories are increasing noting how is aides have witnessed  Biden’s decline in the last few months.  There are serious questions about his capacity to run, win, and serve a second term.  But if the conclusion is that he is mentally unfit to serve a second term, that forces the question whether he should even continue serving as president.

            Biden has to make the choice to discontinue his presidential run. One need not wait for Biden to make a choice to relieve him of his presidential duties.  According to Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment:

 

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

 

The people closest to Biden in his administration know best the president’s mental acuity.  They know whether he is fit to serve.  The Twenty-Fifth Amendment was put into place exactly to address the problem we see now where a sitting president may be so mentally incapacitated that he does not know he is incapacitated.

            Were this scenario to occur,  Harris would assume the duties of the presidency. Foremost, this decision would protect the US from a president who may not longer be fit to serve.  Second, the choice to do this may serve as a backdoor way of removing Biden as a presidential candidate. It would place enormous pressure on Biden to end his presidential debate and on the national delegates to reconsider another candidate.

            Of course, some may think this would be a conflict of interest for Harris to do this—given that she would become acting president and presumptively the Democrats' presidential candidate. In response, the check on Harris is the rest of  Biden’s cabinet.  Second, there is no guarantee that  at the Democratic National Convention Harris would be named the  nominee.

            Overall, the debate on Biden’s fitness as a candidate also raises questions about his fitness to continue to serve as president.  His decision to end his campaign would force  this latter question.  But independent of that choice, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment addresses a potentially more immediate problem that might also  indirectly  address the former.

Machiavelli and the Art of US Presidential Politics

 

The first rule of politics is to get and hold power. At least this is the argument of Niccolo Machiavelli in his classic book, The Prince.  If one wants to impact public policy, winning an election is not just an important thing. It is the only thing. Democrats need to remember that this year as they think about the presidential election and the prospects of running with Joe Biden.

Machiavelli's Prince  is often mischaracterized is making the argument that the ends justify the means.  By that, that any means necessary, whether it's legitimate or not, is permitted so long, it leads to one holding and maintaining power. The reality is even for Machiavelli, there are limits to power. At the end of the day, even he recognized both in the Prince and in his Discourses that the people are important. Winning them over and holding their support is critical to holding on to power.

 But in thinking about how one secures power Machiavelli distinguishes between virtu and fortuna.  Virtu is the characteristics and efficacy that the price possesses. In the case of modern America, a candidate for office brings charisma, their speaking ability, and  their stance on issues. It is their strategy and their ability to persuade or to influence.  Virtu is what is under one’s own control.

  In many ways, Richard Neustadt’s  classic book Presidential Power talks in part about the concept although he never calls it virtu.  Real power is the power to persuade and convince others to vote for you or adopt your policies.  Part of the power to persuade  are those traits that are within the scope and control of the candidate.

Conversely, Machiavelli also refers to fortuna, roughly translated as fate or luck, or perhaps contingency. These are factors beyond the control of the prince. Together, Machiavelli sees an interplay of virtu and fortuna.  The political he opportunities that one has are in part circumscribed or defined by fortuna. Similarly, in assessing the scope of presidential power, as the power to persuade Richard Neustadt sees both factors under a president's control as well as beyond as determining the actual power and influence.

When thinking about Joe Biden,  Machiavelli's concept of virtue and fortuna play out well. It 2020 Joe Biden got elected in part because of who he was a calming elderly candidate, whom people could trust. He significantly got elected because of the circumstances beyond his control. Donald Trump was his own worst enemy. He was a victim of fortuna but also his virtu was his own failing. Trump’s  mishandling of the pandemic just about sealed the election for Joe Biden.

Going into 2024 Joe Biden is behind Donald Trump in the popular vote, but more importantly trails Trump in the critical five or six swing states that will decide the election. Democrats had been hoping that fortuna would work in their favor again. The hope was that the economy would work to Biden's advantage and help him or that abortion politics, much like it worked in 2020 and in the midterm elections of 2022.  There was also hope that Trump's convictions or legal problems would help Biden and perhaps a belief that the Supreme Court decision in the disqualification  case would work to the advantage of Democrats. All of these are variables beyond Biden's control. They are fortuna.

The more one relies upon fortuna the less certain ones fate is.  This is exactly where Biden was prior to the presidential debate. There was a hope that his debate performance would change the direction of the presidential race. But it failed. Now in the days after that failed debate, Democrats and Biden appear to still be reliant upon fortuna hoping that somehow Trump will implode. Or that the voters will come back to their senses because of the fear of a Trump second presidency.

To believe all that is to leave too much to fate or to fortuna. Thinking that doing nothing, staying the course, not replacing Biden with somebody else will somehow lead to some scenario that will lead to his reelection is quite fanciful. In goes against what Machiavelli taught us about the first rule of politics.

What's in a word? Candidate language in the first Trump Biden debate

 

So much focus of the analysis of the Trump Biden debate was on how the candidates appeared or how they performed and very little analysis has been given to what they said or the words they chose to use. While fact checkers noted that the content of what the two candidates said varied in terms of how truthful they were, what also becomes interesting is to look at the words two candidates chose to use and what it says about their two campaigns.

            Eight years ago, I did an analysis of the acceptance speeches by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the respective Democratic and  Republican National Conventions.

            What I found was that Hillary Clinton spoke at an approximate thirteenth or college-level vocabulary. A high percentage of her words were polysyllabic . A high percentage of her words were conceptual as opposed to effective or feeling.

            For Trump, he spoke at a seventh grade level, with few polysyllabic words and with terms that were more effective or emotive.

            One could not have found a greater contrast between the two candidates in terms of the words they chose to use.

            The first Biden Trump presidential debate produced a transcript of the words they chose to use. I analyzed their comments, producing word clouds for each.   For Donald Trump his top four words were country, border, history, and money. For Biden, his top four were idea, number, president and fact. Clearly the two chose to emphasize different words in their speech, reflecting different themes. In fact, of the ten most frequent words each of them used only the words country, history, and president repeated for both of them.

            When it came to Donald Trump in his debate, he spoke 8170 words. His average sentence was 11.2 words.  Of those words 11% or 902 or polysyllabic. Additionally, 65% or 5345 were monosyllabic. According to the Dale-Chali readability index, Trump spoke at a 7.8 grade level.

            For Joe Biden. He spoke a total of 6896 words. His average sentence was 14 words long. Of the words he spoke 64.7%  were monosyllabic, with  10.9% or 755 or polysyllabic. He spoke at an eighth grade level.

            In many ways, Trump and Biden chose different words, but spoke roughly at the same level of readability or intelligibility. This is in sharp contrast to Clinton versus Trump eight years earlier.

            What might we make of this convergence in terms of readability?  Both candidates aimed their comments at a small cluster of 150,000 to 200,000 voters who may not be paying a lot of attention to the election. They are pitched at a level roughly where many newspapers and new shows are. They spoke at a level aimed to maximize viewer cognition or ability to understand their terms and concepts.  Of course, they way they delivered their words and the meaning those words conveyed  also are important.  But together they all speak to why words matter.