By Charles C. W. Cooke
Thursday, July 25, 2024
From the very moment that Joe Biden’s historically
atrocious debate performance caused the Democratic Party to descend into
operatic levels of despair, I have been captured by one overarching instinct as
to the likely result of his mistake: that, somehow, the whole mess was going to
end up with the Republican Party losing the election.
To save my readers some time, I will preemptively concede
all the criticisms that are likely to be hurled my way. I am, indeed, basing
this on an amorphous instinct — “vibes,” one might say — rather than on a
psephologically sound analysis of the polls. I can, indeed, see that the
current evidence appears to contradict my hunch. I do, indeed, strongly dislike
the candidates of both parties — to the point at which I struggle to comprehend
their appeal. And, like every other human being who has ever lived, I am,
indeed, often wrong.
And yet, all of that stipulated, I cannot shake this
feeling.
I do not need to be reminded of Kamala Harris’s flaws.
For years, I have unironically described myself as “perhaps her No. 1 hater in
the United States,” and I remain proudly in that role today. Here, here, here and here, I’ve laid out my problems with Harris’s radicalism,
her authoritarianism, and her weird and nonsensical way of talking, as well as her
profound lack of talent as a thinker, communicator, speaker, coalition-builder,
and more. If the question in play here were solely, “Is Kamala Harris a good
candidate?” my answer would be an emphatic, unalloyed “No.”
But that’s not the sole question — or even the material
question. The material question is whether Kamala Harris and her
as-yet-unappointed VP aspirant can win an election against Donald Trump and J.
D. Vance. And I absolutely, unquestionably, categorically think that she can.
The Biden-Harris administration is by no means loved: Joe Biden is the most
unpopular president in modern history, Kamala Harris is the most unpopular vice
president since polling began, and, in the minds of the average voter, the years
that those two have been in charge of the executive branch have been stained
with inflation, waste, incompetence, a tornado of illegal immigration, a series
of crises abroad, and, most recently, a dastardly conspiracy to cover up the
president’s senility. And yet, despite all that, voters still do
not like the Republicans. Donald Trump is unpopular. J. D. Vance is unpopular.
In every Senate contest other than West Virginia and (perhaps) Montana, the
Democrat is running away with the race. Insofar as the GOP has a good shot at
the presidency this year, it is because much of the electorate dislikes the
incumbents marginally more than it dislikes the GOP. That, though, could
change.
My unsubstantiated hunch holds that it will. Between now
and November, we will witness the most vehement attempt to deify a bad
politician in the history of the United States, combined with the return to the
fray of an ill-disciplined, aging, and increasingly overconfident Donald Trump.
Even in aggregate, these two developments will have only a marginal effect on
the election. But, from what I can see, the election is already so marginal
that it is susceptible to exactly the sort of small shifts in sentiment that a
concerted media barrage is liable to produce. 2 percent here, 1 percent there —
in a divided country where both parties disdain the electorate, these things
quickly add up. If, as it ought, the Republican Party wishes to prove me wrong
in my suspicion, it’s going to have to escape from its post-convention
jubilation — and work like hell.
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