To the president’s speech explaining his decision to step aside: I wanted to be moved and informed and wound up impatient.
It was a speech that carried a high degree of difficulty. A president of the United States with six months to go can’t declare to the world, “I’d love to stay longer but let’s face it, I’m half gaga.” Nor could he quite admit his party forced him out—that concedes too much volatility in the American political scene. But he could speak somewhat candidly and suggestively about reality, and fill in important informational gaps, while also (and protectively) projecting a certain latent strength. Instead the proud old man insisted on his greatness and centrality. The only sparks came from the banalities crashing into the clichés. The gift of the speech was that it underlined the rightness of his decision to step aside, and his party’s decision to push him.
Vice President Kamala Harris must beware of his trying to glom on to the action and insert himself into the campaign. He won’t want to stay in the Oval Office doing quiet work, his spirit will demand involvement. Statements meant to be supportive will sound patronizing. It will make it harder for her to turn the page. Donors, it’s time to suggest you want very much to contribute to his presidential library and hope you’ll feel free to in December, as the year closes.
Now to the hundred-day race.
I had long thought Kamala Harris couldn’t beat Donald Trump. That’s wrong. She can.
We’re a 50/50 country, each side gets 40 going in, you fight for the rest but it can always go either way. As people who speak the technical language of politics say, Mr. Trump has a high floor but a low ceiling.
But beyond that, something’s happening.
Ms. Harris has not, in five years on the national stage, shown competence. She is showing it now, and that is big news. Her rollout this week demonstrated talent and hinted she may be a real political athlete.
Her past and famous verbal embarrassments, which shaped her public reputation, almost all took place in interviews and ad libbed arias. They obscured a real proficiency.
She was striking and strong in this week’s speeches in Milwaukee and Houston. She knows how to act a speech. When she is scripted she is good. That isn’t all put-down. She knows what a good speech is. She can judge it, recognize good material. Not all candidates can. Most can’t. It is its own talent.
Milwaukee especially had power. Its theme: “We’re not going back.” We’re not going back to Jan. 6, 2021, to the old ways, to unfreedom, to racism, sexism, to Trumpian America. We’re going forward into something new and exciting. She was positing that it is bigger than her.
Among those who follow politics closely and are highly online for political content, views of Ms. Harris hardened long ago. But to those of relaxed engagement, especially the young, she will be a new figure. They’ll be seeing her for the first time. They’ll be open to what they see.
Her party is newly alive and loaded for bear. This is what top Trump staffers feared, according to Tim Alberta’s heavily reported work in the Atlantic. They didn’t fear Joe Biden. What they feared was “institutional Democrats,” in the words of Susie Wiles. The Democratic Party is a machine, a vast network of groups and money lines that knows how to get out their base and a would-be base. A deteriorated Joe Biden couldn’t fully capitalize on this. A dispirited party wouldn’t fully produce it.
But a new and revived candidate who woke everybody up? That would be a danger.
There is discernible spirit already among the young, among liberal women, black women. In my town I am seeing the suddenly clenched jaw of the woman who backed Hillary, was devastated by 2016, and has one last chance to take it to Mr. Trump and get a woman over the line. It is the Revenge of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit. It will have power.
Online, the rise of the TikTok voters, the Harris supporters and their Brat video memes. They have taken Ms. Harris’s past incoherent statements and elevated them into their own Dadaesque art form. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? Ha ha! I love Venn diagrams. It is strangely mesmerizing. I started to think this isn’t idiocy, it’s Ezra Pound. This would be an unalloyed part of the sheer joy of politics if TikTok weren’t a Chinese espionage operation.
“Obama hasn’t endorsed her yet.” Barack Obama isn’t a guy who joins a chorus. He deploys himself carefully, for maximum impact. Wait for a magical rally. It will be like the one where the Kennedy family anointed him during the 2008 Democratic primary. Mr. Obama had a real coalition. He is going to get it out.
Finally, mainstream media will want to get back onside. They just did Joe Biden in, they’re not going to do in his heir. Also: Donald Trump, so what the heck.
In the end it will come down to issues and positions. She should scramble toward the center and try to hold it every day. It isn’t at all clear that is her intention. In her Thursday speech to the teachers union she took straight, down-the-line progressive postures.
Maybe she thinks all the common wisdom is wrong: She can win through a titanic battle of left and right. Maybe she can. What that will look like will matter a lot.
A final note. Everything is about to get meaner, more vicious and primal.
Biden supporters were deep down unsure, and it made them milder. Ms. Harris’s energy revives the party’s hunger; its angers will be more awake. Mr. Trump and his forces can’t not be mean, it is their essence when threatened.
Here is some urgently meant advice. The American political story right now is one of instability. We claim to be the indispensable nation, the biggest power, the secure one that can be trusted with the nuclear arsenal. If you would be all-powerful you must be an obviously stable political entity. We have been failing at this for some time and are failing now. It will have reverberations down the road.
* * *
For now, to cool things:
Stop showing pictures of Donald Trump with blood running down his face. Stop obsessing on the assassination attempt. It excites the unstable. I can do that too. The sick and the evil don’t need more inspirations.
Stop obsessing publicly over the inadequacy of the Secret Service. (Washington, obsess on it quietly, and fix it.) It tells the sickest among us how easy it is to get around security and get your shot. We have to stop telling them this.
America’s enemies are excited by vulnerability, weakness, a sense things are scattered. On an average day key figures in our government—the secretaries of state and defense, heads of intelligence and domestic agencies—are on the road, in the conference in Prague and the meeting in Seoul. Right now, with the aged president and the volatile politics, they should stop, stay close to home, be in their offices in Washington.
Be there, not on planes and in hotel rooms. The look of solidity is almost as good as the real thing.