The Democrats are bound to ramp up their attacks on RFK Jr (Emily Elconin/Getty Images)
With Joe Biden replaced by Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, what will happen come November? If history is a guide, the chances of the party holding on to the White House may have increased. Not, it must be said, because of Harris’s charisma or intellect, but because her candidacy could minimise Democrat defections to third-party candidates. In a race between two unpopular candidates, this might make all the difference.
Over the past three decades, the Republican Party has done relatively poorly in its bids for the White House. This is partly because, apart from when his son won 50.7% of the popular vote in 2004, no Republican has won an outright majority since George H.W. Bush in 1988. Even worse, George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 won the White House despite losing the overall popular vote. Fortunately for Trump, in the latter instance, independent candidates won 5% of the national share, biting into the Democratic vote. But four years later, that figure fell to 1.5% — allowing Biden to win even though Trump’s popular vote also increased.
What about 2024? For months, it has seemed that the defection of the anti-war Left from the Democrats to RFK Jr, Jill Stein, Cornel West and other protest candidates would help Trump in November. But a Harris candidacy could, in fact, minimise defection.
This is partly due to circumstances that came to light even before Biden stepped aside. By choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump has crafted a populist ticket which, on issues such as trade and immigration, might benefit third-party candidates such as the Libertarian nominee, Chase Oliver. As well as being a former Democrat, Oliver’s support for an unlimited number of non-criminal immigrants joining the workforce could win the vote of some traditional free-market Republicans.
But there are other, more important factors that could simultaneously stop Democratic defections — and chief among them is the centrality of identity politics to American progressive ideology. Put simply, it is unlikely that those who voted in protest against Biden — an old white man — would also vote against a female black and half-Asian Democratic nominee.
What of Harris’s policies? One of the great sports of American politics is pretending that the detailed policy positions or voting records of presidential candidates matter. But the truth is the vast majority of Americans will vote for a party regardless of its nominee. And many of the swing voters who are undecided at this late stage are what political scientists and pollsters rather kindly call “low-information voters” who pay little attention to politics. Such “disengaged voters” — predominantly less educated, lower-income, and young — have little knowledge of party positions and do not follow political news. One study suggests that voters who are poorly informed about the positions of the parties are more likely than better-informed voters to be influenced by a candidate’s looks.
If policy positions are not necessarily the basis of political success, neither is favourable media coverage. The editors and reporters of the American mainstream media organs, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and National Public Radio (NPR), are overwhelmingly Democratic in partisanship. Having helped to cover up Biden’s debility since the 2020 campaign, the Left-leaning American press no doubt will pivot now and portray Harris in the most flattering light possible, while demonising Trump and Vance as sinister neo-fascists who would replace democracy with dictatorship if they were elected.
Of course, the credibility of the mainstream media has been damaged by their promotion of bogus claims in recent years: about Russia’s influence on the 2016 election, the origins of Covid, and falsehoods about Biden’s health and mental acuity. Biden’s disastrous debate performance exposed their mendacity. In any event, most of the Democratic press’s audience consists of partisan Democrats — not the low-information swing voters which both presidential campaigns will try to reach. The exception to the generally limited influence of the media on public political opinion may, however, be live, televised debates. With no intermediaries engaging in spin, Americans can view candidates directly for a prolonged time. It was, after all, Biden’s shockingly poor debate performance that ultimately drove him from the race.
Harris can hardly do worse. She has often been ridiculed for her meandering syntax as well as her laugh. But Harris wouldn’t be debating a slick, conventional politician. Instead, her debate rival would be a man who often veers off into preposterous boasts or rambling anecdotes. Harris may, in fact, benefit from how Trump is often as inarticulate as she is.
This is crucial. By historical standards, all of this year’s presidential candidates — Trump, Biden, and possibly now Harris — have been extremely unpopular, marking a sharp rupture with the previous performances of Obama and even Biden at the beginning of his term. Indeed, political scientists and pollsters have identified a new breed of American swing voter, the “double hater”, who despises both parties and their candidates and makes up 14% of the electorate this year. In this environment, presidential races are unpopularity contests. According to one study, one in three voters this year is motivated by opposition to the other candidate. The winner can be widely loathed as long as the loser is loathed even more.
When Biden was the presumptive nominee, Democrats ran a negative campaign based on vilifying Trump and his Republican supporters rather than emphasising the policies of the Biden administration. We can expect that if the unpopular Harris replaces the unpopular Biden, the Democrats will double down on demonising not only Trump and Vance but also RFK Jr and other independent candidates who threaten to prevent an anti-Trump coalition from uniting behind the new Democratic nominee. The American presidential race following Biden’s withdrawal is going to be very nasty indeed. Welcome to the most important unpopularity contest on the planet.
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SubscribeWell done! Wow, a real discussion with real differences of opinion. Loss count how many times in 64 minutes I agreed and disagreed. What a delight! Bob Pruger, an American dissenter to the lockdown.
Maybe my expectations of this event were too high, but I felt the discussion was far too intellectual for my taste and brain power. Mary Harrington was excellent and articulate and had some interesting and valid viewpoints. I thought I had a reasonable grasp of the english language but I found Aris difficult to follow and hadn’t a clue where he was coming from. I felt it a pity for those online subscribers to have the event combined with a pub evening for those present in the “studio”. I’d forgotten what central London office/pub culture was like.
I turned it off shortly after 40:30, the point where Freddy says that ‘My guess is this panel will be in favor of increased spending’ ‘Is there anyone here that would say its gone too far?’
!!!!!!!!!!!
Only if you believe that the destruction of the world’s economy and millions of lives destroyed and killed matter, and possibly the end of society as we know it because of the “covid” spending. 50 trillion spent on the ‘Response’ globally, that is after a huge asset bubble had been building for decades, and debt higher than ever in history…
Helen Thompson (Political Economics) “Political economy is a branch of social science that studies the relationship that forms between a nation’s population and its government when public policy is enacted.” addressing Freddys question rambled about the ‘Bond Market’, ‘I don’t like it’, and that QE saving the bond market March 2020 caused something, but does not say what, and that taxes cannot pay it back, and the point of no return is crossed but no one can say what it means, and bla, bla, bla….and drops the topic.
Here it is as I see it
1) massive deflation, and the Great Depression II (depression was deflation) (youtube Jeff Booth, Harry Dent, and dozens of others). Tech is Deflationary as it makes manufacturing and software automated, boosts productivity, so drops prices. The Fed must print 5-8% free money just to get 2% inflation because the deflationary effect of tech. Deflation means debt is unaffordable as money is expensive and debt becomes too expensive to ever pay off (Globe holds $200,000,000,000,000 debt public and private) so BOOM! Economy dead if printing slows (UBI will have to be handed out just to keep deflation from happening and the printing presses humming – but that will not work very long)
2) Inflation is needed in our economic system to absorb the excess debt and money printing, 2% is thought ideal, (inflation is a tax on everyone to fund government redistribution) but then….Hyper Inflation. By definition Inflation IS THE INCREASE OF MONEY SUPPLY WITHOUT CORRESPONDING PRODUCTION, AND TRILLIONS OF PRINTING MONETARY AND FISCAL $ IS THAT. THEN WAGE INFLATION IS COMING. CPI, and industrial input inflation is running 5.%, wages inflating, – – real assets inflation, commodities, housing, and Equities, energy (12% – 200% so far, in one year)… Once inflation begins raising interest is normally used to hold it – this is IMPOSSIBLE because the debt, so it has to remain ZERO. If spending ($150 Billion/month + 3.2 Trillion, plus 4 trillion ‘Green’) is ‘Tapered’ (reduced) the entire mess collapses into default. Hyperinflation is like Wiemar, Argentina, Zimbabwe… Peter Schiff, Rickards, Dalio, and others on youtube….
But Unherd does not do Money, but it is like watching Germany in 1932 – 38, just waiting for it to get going, and all the MSM is blithely taking of celebrities and social issues. Covid was not a illness issue, it is an economic issue, and the lockdown may have destroyed us – or not, maybe Tech will keep productivity exponentially rising so we can not produce, but still spend, like in 2020, and we all can retire on UBI soon – or not…..
“””It’s the economy, stupid
“The economy, stupid” is a phrase coined by James Carville in 1992. It is often quoted from a televised quip by Carville as “It’s the economy, stupid.” Carville was a strategist in Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against incumbent George H. W. Bush”””
Stephen, it was all just word salad they were serving us, just vaguely rambling on trying to express how they felt about something they have not reflected on. You note the vast numbers of umm, er, hmmm, and so on as every second word – that means they had not done the very obvious and necessary step of being given the questions days early to prepare so they could say something thought out and useful.
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Oh, are they finished droning on yet? Because I had to pause it or be forced to gnaw my own leg off to escape that sensory deprivation chamber.
There was one moment in the discussion where they discussed of how,when fallowing the bellwether sheep, they used its tail as an indication of direction to take, or if they preferred to fallow its comforting bell, and in the end all agreed it did not matter so long as it was leading them to where they needed to be going.
One caller mentioned how ‘All us sheep live our life in fear of the wolves, yet end up being eaten by the shepherd’. This was derided as Post-Neo-Liberal claptrap by the panel, unanimously, and said the caller must be a F* scist and hung up.
Well done Unherd, and Freddy, bring us this stimulating debate.