It never occurred to me that I might take the time to comment on a Substack article, let alone a Barro article (I'm a fan), but this analysis is gobsmacking.
Any voluntary change in the 2024 ticket is a giant red "salience" button for the issue of whether Biden is the right candidate. Further, as in every election, the incumbent's ticket …
It never occurred to me that I might take the time to comment on a Substack article, let alone a Barro article (I'm a fan), but this analysis is gobsmacking.
Any voluntary change in the 2024 ticket is a giant red "salience" button for the issue of whether Biden is the right candidate. Further, as in every election, the incumbent's ticket is a referendum on the performance of the incumbent themselves.
Biden's biggest problem is that he's one of the most effective Democratic presidents in the last 50 years and nobody knows it. His biggest challenge will be to focus 2024 on his own accomplishments (and to resist being sucked into the black hole of negative campaigning that a Trump candidacy will generate). There's nothing Biden could do that would be more disruptive to that goal than to be the first incumbent since FDR to voluntarily switch running mates.
I very much agree with the point about salience. More specifically, anything that draws attention to the fact that Biden has a Vice President and the choice of that person is a highly consequential decision necessarily raises the salience of Biden's own mortality as an issue. That's playing directly into what's politically probably Biden's biggest organic weakness.
And what's Biden's story as to the switch? Has he lost confidence in Harris's ability to pick up the baton if/when his health fails him? If so, why should we trust his choice this time around? If that's got nothing to do with it and he just thinks Whitmer has more upside politically, should we be concerned that he's picking a VP on those grounds and not based on whom he really trusts to step in for him if necessary?
Even if Biden manages to hit on the most appealing possible answer to those questions and to stick to it, the very fact that those are the questions that need to be answered is already a loss for him IMO.
It never occurred to me that I might take the time to comment on a Substack article, let alone a Barro article (I'm a fan), but this analysis is gobsmacking.
Any voluntary change in the 2024 ticket is a giant red "salience" button for the issue of whether Biden is the right candidate. Further, as in every election, the incumbent's ticket is a referendum on the performance of the incumbent themselves.
Biden's biggest problem is that he's one of the most effective Democratic presidents in the last 50 years and nobody knows it. His biggest challenge will be to focus 2024 on his own accomplishments (and to resist being sucked into the black hole of negative campaigning that a Trump candidacy will generate). There's nothing Biden could do that would be more disruptive to that goal than to be the first incumbent since FDR to voluntarily switch running mates.
I very much agree with the point about salience. More specifically, anything that draws attention to the fact that Biden has a Vice President and the choice of that person is a highly consequential decision necessarily raises the salience of Biden's own mortality as an issue. That's playing directly into what's politically probably Biden's biggest organic weakness.
And what's Biden's story as to the switch? Has he lost confidence in Harris's ability to pick up the baton if/when his health fails him? If so, why should we trust his choice this time around? If that's got nothing to do with it and he just thinks Whitmer has more upside politically, should we be concerned that he's picking a VP on those grounds and not based on whom he really trusts to step in for him if necessary?
Even if Biden manages to hit on the most appealing possible answer to those questions and to stick to it, the very fact that those are the questions that need to be answered is already a loss for him IMO.