Kamala Harris needs an open convention if she's going to beat Trump

A nomination she has handed to her is a poisoned chalice

The Democratic Party has spent the last who-knows-how-long lying to the country. Now, they didn’t do a very good job of it, and if you paid any amount of attention to what you could see with your eyes, rather than what you were being told by liberal cable news, you knew that Joe Biden was fading badly. But now everybody knows, and so the question is what to do next. 

What’s so delightful, in a civic sense, is that everyone has an opinion about what should come next. I do too, and I think mine ought to carry a little extra weight since I’ve been arguing for more than a year that Biden should step aside for reasons of patent mental infirmity, and I took plenty of grief for it. 

But first of all, let’s understand why Biden is totally finished, whether he knows it or not. From talking to elected Democrats and other top officials this week (actually, mostly texting, which is how all reporting seems to be done now), I can say that they see Biden’s situation as a risk not to the country, not to the party, but to themselves, and that’s what matters. Biden is obviously incapacitated. Anybody who says otherwise is obviously lying. If they claim that he is up to the job in spite of what we’ve seen, they look like liars. Because they are lying. Bob Casey, running for Senate re-election in Pennsylvania, is already getting hit with “Bob Casey knew” attack ads. The premise is that Casey knew how bad he was, but said otherwise. Which is true. No politician wants that handicap in an election, and that’s why you’re seeing elected Democrats backing away from Biden. It’s not clear when he’ll be forced out, but he can’t survive against this. 

So then what? Rep. Jim Clyburn today, in a huge blow to Biden, said that he’d support Kamala Harris if Biden dropped out. That’s fine for him, but if the party as a whole foists her as the nominee, not only will it be a disservice to the public, it will also be a disservice to Kamala Harris herself. Recall that Harris briefly surged in the presidential campaign in 2019 but then under scrutiny collapsed into the low single-digits, dropping out before a single vote was cast. A party that is at its nadir of credibility after its scandalous deception simply doesn't have the credibility to take Harris from there to the presidency in a matter of just weeks. She’d be crushed, and anybody around her would be nuked with her.

If Kamala Harris wants the nomination, and wants it to be worth anything, she has to at least show that she fought for it and won it cleanly. And the only way to do that is at an open convention. It just so happens Democrats are scheduled to meet to nominate a presidential candidate in Chicago next month.

The obvious counter argument is that, well, a convention of delegates isn’t really democracy. These are party elites and activists, most of them aligned with the party establishment. But look: the party’s left flank long ago gave up the dream they’d nominate a left-leaning candidate this cycle. At this point, their only real goal is to beat Trump. And democracy is more than just the procedural trappings of elections. (A recent survey, for instance, found that Chinese people were more likely to say they lived in a democracy than Americans were.)

The key for an open convention to be legitimate in the eyes of the public is that it has to feel open. If the various candidates and their allies are on TV regularly and giving speeches on their behalf, with regular breaking-news around endorsements from big-wigs, unions, environmental groups, etc., it will feel like what we understand today as authentically real and democratic: reality TV. The spectacle will captivate global attention and create a bond between the viewer and the stars of the spectacle – especially if it seems like social media sentiment is playing a real role in how things are unfolding. If that sentiment is seen as helping choose the next nominee, Trump is toast. If Democratic bosses anoint somebody, that person is toast. 

Linger on the reality TV point for a moment. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Reality TV played, I think, the leading role in electing Trump president. Celebrity Apprentice was the most watched show on television and its tens of millions of viewers (mis)understood that Trump was the person he played on that show. Reality TV is the primary building block of our culture today, for better or for worse. An open convention with confessional-esque interviews and spinoff podcasts is what Democrats need to become one with the public again. Right now, they are a cloistered pack of liars and frauds. If they don’t change that perception, they’ll lose badly, and will deserve to. And Harris will go down in flames. 

For party leaders, an open convention is a nightmare, because it means briefly losing control. But come on, Jack: Everybody in contention is a reliable member of the party establishment. You’re not even risking anything. Yes, Harris people lose if Whitmer wins, Whitmer people lose if Pritzker wins, and so on. But come on. You’ll be ok. 

Chicago can be the moment Democrats return the party to the people. Sort of. Like a good reality TV series, we’ll know a bunch of it is staged, but some of it is real, and all of it is us. At least give us that. Let’s watch what happens live.