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A long night ahead

The Democrats have done it again. When faced with a well-organized but extraordinarily controversial Republican candidate for president in Donald Trump, and having their own lawfully elected candidate withdraw from the race midstream, the Dems have reached out for a significant nobody to head their ticket.

In early 2024, Joe Biden was duly selected through the state-by-state primary races to be the Democratic candidate for president for a second term. He was expected to be nominated at the Democratic convention and to again select Kamala Harris to be his vice-presidential candidate.

However, after the mid-summer televised debate between Biden and Trump, and in the midst of the concerned despair that followed what some believed was Biden’s dramatically flawed performance in the debate, Biden suddenly announced his decision to withdraw from the race. Many thought his performance in the TV debate – which was to keep his head down and his answers directly and precisely confined to the questions asked, and to ignore completely the blistering stream of invective comments coming from Trump – was exactly proper. Others, in a mounting whirlwind of comment, thought Biden was overwhelmed by Trump, and was completely defeated by him in the contest.

This whirlwind overtook the party officials and they considered whether any action could or should be taken. In years past, and in other races, switching horses, or even trying to switch horses, midstream was usually met with disaster. Witness recent memory in Idaho when gubernatorial candidate Charles Herdon’s sudden death and the scramble by the Democrats to replace him contributed to the election of Republican Don Samuelson, the lackluster and generally thought to be incompetent state senator from North Idaho, and later, Jack Murphy’s failed attempt to resign from his candidacy for governor contributed to Cecil Andrus’s campaign. Recall that Andrus then trounced Murphy soundly, being elected with an unheard of 70% of the vote.

Biden’s television debate with Trump took place before the official Democratic convention was held, and the party officials publicly wondered whether, when, why and how they could deny Biden the office. Despite all the problems of switching candidates midstream, and despite the argument that the tempest over Biden’s performance at the television debate was probably only of teapot size, the party powers decided to accept Biden’s resignation.

There was no renewed primary election process, and no other candidates officially offered their names as replacements. The Democratic powers met in their proverbial closet and decided to accept Biden’s withdrawal and designate Kamala Harris to replace him on the ticket. They then presented her to a willing convention as the sole nominee for office.

In 2024, Kamala Harris was for all intents, and unknown as a presidential candidate. She had been vice president under Biden, but her only real qualifications were strictly local to California.  She had been a respected lawyer there with her public local offices served being a county prosecuting attorney and the state attorney general. Nationally, she had only been the recently elected United States senator for California when, in 2020, Joe Biden tapped her to serve as his vice president. Her service there was clearly under Biden, with little opportunity to demonstrate her own qualifications. The upshot is that with her short stint as senator and her position as vice president under the shadow of Biden’s presidency, her experience in national service is limited. She is still an untested candidate to run the country.

To top these issues, she is female, non-white, and married to a Jew. Any one of these facts could trigger a defeat from an electorate that rejected Hillary Clinton, the only other female national party candidate in history, was generally reluctant to accept Biden’s Catholic religion, and only grudgingly accepted Obama’s half-white existence. The combination in Harris may be overwhelming.

On the other hand, Harris has proved to be an extraordinary candidate, collecting more than a billion dollars in campaign contributions, besting Donald Trump soundly by most critics in their only televised joint appearance, and running a flawless campaign on issues. In addition, it appears that Republicans in droves are deserting their party’s candidate to cross over to her side.

The result, with less than a week to go, and despite all the unexplainable infirmities of Trump’s candidacy, is an election that is too close to call. Both sides are claiming victory, but the polls still show it as being essentially a dead heat. With less than a week to go, and with the margin of error considered on the specific reports, the overall polling results still stand generally at 50 – 50.

Get plenty of rest next Tuesday. It’s going to be a long night.

 

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