The prosecutor vs. the felon

President Biden has let go of his candidacy to focus on being president during this time of major international chaos. He also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential nomination, virtually guaranteeing she’ll head up the ticket.

There’s little chance that the Democratic Party’s candidate will be anybody other than Kamala Harris, and she’s certainly earned it.

President Biden put her in charge of the southern border and, Republican lies aside, illegal crossings are down dramatically (over 54% down, according to CBS News) and violent crime is at lows we haven’t seen in decades (it peaked with Trump).

She’s met with world leaders and represented America brilliantly during a time when China, Russia, and Iran are moving aggressively against nearby democracies and here in America the GOP has embraced naked authoritarianism.

She’s helped shepherd through Congress some of the most consequential legislation in our lifetimes to backstop the middle class, fight climate change, and revitalize the American economy. She’s been beside Biden at most of history’s hinge-points and honorably elevated her office, something nobody could say about, for example, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, or Mike Pence (with one single exception).

Vice President Harris has been an outspoken advocate of women’s reproductive rights in the face of Republican efforts to turn the clock back to the 1950s; she’s been a champion for voting rights (particularly the John Lewis Freedom To Vote Act); and has a solid law-and-order background as San Francisco District Attorney and California’s elected Attorney General.

She worked side-by-side with President Biden to bring our economy back from the worst collapse since the Republican Great Depression, rebuild our infrastructure, support democracies around the world, extend affordable healthcare to millions more Americans, lower prescription drug prices, pass the first consequential gun safety law in three decades, and appoint the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. And the two of them brought us out of the worst pandemic since 1918; Covid is also now well under control, thanks in no small part to their efforts.

And she’s electable: imagine the debate between a former sex crimes prosecutor and a man a jury found had raped one woman and who’s been accused of sexual assault by another 23 women (including one 13 years old). Trump can imagine that and it terrifies him; he’s already talking about changing the terms of the debate, saying yesterday he may refuse to show up if it’s carried on “biased” CBS as planned.

Vice President Kamala Harris has earned both Joe Biden’s trust and his endorsement for President of the United States. I believe she’s also earned the support of most American voters, and the Party needs to solidify the ticket fast.

The GOP attacks have already started: the first Republican hit against this process came from House Speaker Mike Johnson, saying that the Democratic Party will now revert to “smoke-filled rooms” to decide our 2024 ticket because the Party has “abandoned democracy” in favor of appointment.

In fact, America is a “representative democracy” and always has been; we elect people to represent us and do the work of governing and decision-making on our behalf.

Along those lines, the delegates who will be deciding and ratifying the decision of this year’s ticket are almost all elected officials representing their constituents, and the few who are party insiders were mostly selected by people who we’ve elected.

Nobody smokes any more (at least in public), and the rooms where these decisions will be made are, by and large, filled with people we put there through elections to act on our behalf. Transparently. Publicly.

That is democracy.

With regard to President Biden and his decision to step down from the race, this is an historic example of a man putting his country ahead of his ego. Like George Washington voluntarily stepping down after his second term when no law or amendment required it and the majority of Americans wanted him to stay on, it shows the patriotism and integrity of the man.

I’ve known or met a lot of politicians (including Joe Biden) and an absolute truism is how addictive power can be; just ask the families of the five civilians and three police officers Donald Trump let die as he gleefully watched on TV the violence that he’d provoked trying to hang onto his own power. Joe Biden stepping aside is a rarity, and an extraordinarily honorable one.

President Biden stepping out of the race will also make it much easier for Democrats to point out Trump’s often-incoherent rambling, obsession with sharks and Hannibal Lecter, and advanced age.

On his CNN program yesterday, Fareed Zacharia pointed out that the parties had selected their candidates (like Democrats must do now) from the earliest days of our republic right up until the 1970s; in the last century-plus it happened at the nominating conventions.

Moving from the “smoke filled rooms” to a primary system in the 1970s may have seemed like a more small-d democratic option than having elected delegates make the decision, but the reality we all see now is that it was precisely that decision that removed the guard-rails of each party’s elders and let Democrat Donald Trump strut in and eat the GOP alive.

Going forward, hopefully both parties will reconsider the decision to hand the process over to voters without any sort of pre-selection process by the party itself. Both parties need to find and institute a middle ground between “smoke-filled rooms” and simple primaries.

The Republican Party’s senior-most people should have had the power to prevent a lifetime-registered-Democrat and notorious racist from even entering their primary race; that Trump even got into the debates was a huge failure of this new post-1970s system which has now destroyed that once-storied party.

That said, I well remember how, in 2016, Democratic Party insiders screwed Bernie Sanders so badly that DNC Acting Chair Donna Brazile wrote a chapter in her autobiography apologizing to him (and, yes, his progressive populist message could have easily beat Trump that year).

While the Democratic Party hasn’t yet had to deal with a Trump type of demagogue (certainly Bernie doesn’t qualify!), I hope that whatever changes or tweaks that emerge from a reevaluation of our current primary system (if it happens) would respect voters and democracy, prevent a repeat of “Berniecide,” and also prevent an ultimately destructive person from ever again seizing a presidential candidacy.

There are many lessons to be learned from this year’s election. The main one right now, though, is that because the RNC failed three times to protect America from a dictatorial madman that job now falls to us.

We must unite quickly around our candidate and her and our Party’s pick for VP and hit the ground running by the end of this week.