that will happen if Kamala does not replace Joe will be epic!
But if Biden retires and the party doesn’t nominate Harris, all of the bad blood over the diversity promises of 2020 will explode. That will be especially true if the party nominates Gavin Newsom instead, who notably angered the black and female activists in the party by appointing Alex Padilla to fill out the rest of Harris’ term in the Senate rather than another black woman. This won’t be a Kennedy-Carter contest but an explosion of identity-politics grudges and fury, much more 1968 than 1980.
The only way to avoid that is to keep Biden on the ticket, and then win or lose, force Harris to compete for a truly open nomination cycle in 2028. That is why Democrats will prop up Biden for as long as it takes, even if they have to do a Weekend At Bernie’s campaign in 2024. Marcus is spot on, even if she’s too polite to call out the identity-politics dead end more explicitly.
The Democrats are in a tight spot: Joe is mentally failing fast. He won’t be able to gut it out for a lot longer. Yet Kamala is even less acceptable to most people than even Senile Joe!
Plus, there is simply no other potential Democrat candidate who even approaches electability. Democrats have long put ALL their money on racial identity politics, and unfortunately for them, that has become something of a snare, now.