No. of Recommendations: 4
But, as you pointed out months ago, it's probably too late for a new candidate to 'rev-up'. Harris could at least take over the reigns, but it's still a bad look (and very late in the game, regardless).
Yep. To borrow Matt Yglesias' framing of it, the fundamental question is whether Biden is above or below the "Kamala Line" - the point where the Democrats would be better off switching to Harris, because there are enormous and unavoidable downsides to making that switch. Because those downsides are so huge, Biden has to be in really dire straits for that to be the smart choice.
In 2023, Biden was above the Kamala line. Now, he's not. The campaign's strategy of controlling public perception of Biden to make it seem like he was more capable than he really is might have worked, but the debate destroyed the viability of that approach. Everyone's seen behind the curtain, and there will be virtually no more Democrats willing to go out and tell voters that Biden's 100% there any more.
It's hard for me to imagine a world where they could look at the two candidates and conclude "convict Trump is less dangerous, less deranged, less addled than Biden".
Why is that hard for you to imagine? Trump is winning!!!! The electorate is not categorically rejecting Trump, no matter how much we might wish they would. He's leading all the national polls. He's leading every swing state poll. He was leading before the debate, and now he's leading by even more. The voters are concluding that Trump is less dangerous, less deranged, and less addled than Biden.
If Biden was still operating at 2020 levels of competency as a candidate, it would be difficult for him to reverse that; how on earth is he going to be able to change that now? He can't do the basic tasks of campaigning in July; it's going to be worse in October. Sure, Democrats can run ads. They make great ads. But they've been running ads against Trump for a while, and it hasn't changed the dynamic of the race; and now Trump has the money and some amazingly powerful ad fodder to run against Biden.
