US Election

The US Democratic Convention has chosen vice president Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate.

In the US Constitution, the vice-president is a bit of a nothing role. The vice president spends four years waiting for the president to die, which usually does not happen. Their only other role is to act as speaker of the senate, but there is very little to do there, except give an odd casting vote. Sometimes, a president will delegate to the vice president an additional responsibility, but it will usually be something unpopular that the president wants to distance themselves from. (Dick Chaney was the exception because he had considerable, unconstitutional control over George W Bush). The 25th Amendment gives a role to the vice president, but so far it has never been used.

So vice presidents are not usually chosen for their skills. They are chosen for their ability to draw in a broader range of voters to the presidential candidate. Obama was a young black man, so he chose an older white man, Joe Biden, to balance the ticket. Joe Biden and an older white man chose Kamala Harris, a younger black woman, to balance his ticket when he was standing for president.

The other important qualification of a vice president is that they must not outshine the presidential candidate (Sarah Palin did this for a while when selected by John McCain). The result is that presidential candidates usually choose someone slightly mediocre to be their running mate. This puts Kamala Harris at a double disadvantage. Obama chose mediocre Joe Biden, who would not outshine him. Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as she would draw in a different voting segment, but would not outperform his mediocrity.

Kamala Harris is a fairly mediocre candidate for the presidency, but that does not mean she cannot be elected. We must remember that possibly a majority of voters were going to vote for Joe Biden. They were not keen on the idea, but believed that it was a better option than voting for Donald Trump. They realised that Joe Biden was getting senile, but trusted that the White House team could manage him sufficiently well to keep his presidency on track and the nation strong. It was not an ideal option, but many voters believed it was preferable to another four years of Donald Trump.

Joe Biden’s decision to end his candidacy was a huge relief for people who believed that they had to vote form. Kamala Harris is not an ideal candidate, but no one else was available, and she is miles better than a senile Joe Biden. She might be mediocre, but if a good team could keep a fading Joe Biden going, they can do the same for her. Provided a strong team is put around Kamala Harris, people who would have voted for Joe Biden while holding their nose are very pleased to be able to vote for his vice president.

The Republicans are trying to expose Kamala Harris’s weaknesses, but the people who will vote for her do not care, because even if she has weaknesses, she is a far stronger candidate than Joe Biden, and that is all they care about. And the polls are suggesting that she has the potential to keep Donald Trump out, which is a bonus for them.

Harris’s supporters are comparing her with Joe Biden, not with Donald Trump, so she appears like a winner to them.

I sense that Donald Trump has peaked. He failed to win a majority in the 2020 election. Since then, many moral people have been put off by his philandering. And although he has not been convicted of any crimes yet, some of the mud has stuck. So, although he has a strong support base, his popularity is not growing.

Now that he is older, Trump seems to find it hard to focus on presenting policy alternatives. Instead, he rambles on about what would not have happened if he had been president, which cannot be proved either way, because he has not been president. His exaggerated claims about what he achieved when he was president put many people off; because they want capability, not bluster.

I suspect that Trump does not really know how to deal with Harris. He found it easy to be rude to “Wicked Hillary” because she was already unpopular, but because he likes attractive women, he looks a bit uncomfortable attacking Kamala Harris. And if he is too ruthless, he is scared that it will backfire on him.

So the election could be close, close enough to be challenged by the side that loses. And because the management of the election process is so politicised, it will not be possible to prove that the election was fair. I am not sure how that will end.