Did Joe Biden's endorsement of Kamala Harris to replace him as nominee give Democrats a path out of chaos? Or did it ensure that they would remain mired in it?

Either Biden remained loyal or remained bitter. Or both!

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

Normally, this would not have been an unusual development in the case of an incumbent choosing not to run for a second term. That does not describe these circumstances at all, however, and everyone knows it. Joe Biden wanted to run for a second term and began lashing out at the Democrat establishment mutineers several days ago for attempting to push him out. 

Before we get to the issue of succession, we should ask why he suddenly reversed course today. Was it this poll from Michigan?

An exclusive new Free Press poll of likely Michigan voters shows former President Donald Trump has taken a notable 7-percentage-point lead over incumbent President Joe Biden in the state, a result certain to further worry Democrats already pushing for Biden to abandon his reelection bid. ...

The poll showed Trump, who held a rally in Grand Rapids on Saturday evening, leading Biden 49%-42% in a head-to-head matchup, with 9% undecided, saying they would vote for neither or refusing to answer. In a five-way race, Trump led with 43% to 36% for Biden, 8% for independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and 2% each for Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West. Again 9% said they either would not vote for president, pick someone else or were undecided.

Trump led in every region of the state, including in metro Detroit — defined as Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties and seen as the most predominantly Democratic region in Michigan — where he held a slim but remarkable 46%-44% edge in the head-to-head matchup with Biden and a 43%-38% margin in the five-way race.

That might explain why Biden pulled out. Trump's lead in Michigan doubled in this poll series since its last iteration, taken before the debate. Majorities agreed in nearly all demos that Biden should withdraw as well, including black voters, Biden's best base of support.

However, while that could explain the sudden reversal, these poll results certainly don't explain the endorsement. Harris barely leads the pack among alternatives and didn't even get to 20%:

The poll found that if Biden were to step aside, 19% believed Vice President Kamala Harris should replace him as the nominee; 17% said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and 11% said former first lady Michelle Obama. Of five other names tested — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker — none did better than single digits. Twenty percent of respondents mentioned some other name altogether.

Perhaps Biden hopes that he can goose Harris' numbers with an endorsement, but let's not forget that Biden is not a popular incumbent. His approval numbers, as Nancy Pelosi kept trying to warn him, are among the worst in history and have been in the deep red ever since his disgraceful retreat in Kabul and his abandonment of 14,000 Americans to the Taliban. Biden's been trying to maintain Harris' standing all along, but her favorability numbers (-14.2) are almost as bad as Biden's (-17.5), and significantly worse than Donald Trump's (-10.9). 

That's why the establishment coup plotters want an "open process" to find a replacement, not a handoff. Nancy Pelosi again has pushed that in particular, but it's also been the seeming consensus among the Dump Biden leaders, and for good reason:

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker, recently told her colleagues in the California delegation that if President Biden were to end his campaign she would favor the “competitive” process of an open primary rather than an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic presidential nominee. ...

Lawmakers in attendance then pressed her on what the landscape would look like if Mr. Biden ultimately decided to step aside under pressure. Ms Pelosi told them she favored a competitive process. Ms. Pelosi, according to a source familiar with her thinking, is a friend and fan of Ms. Harris, a former senator from California. But she believes even Ms. Harris would be strengthened to win the general election by going through a competitive process at the convention.

A second person briefed on Ms. Pelosi’s views, who also declined to be named discussing private conversations, said her desire for an open primary process is driven by polling data about who can win the election, and that she believes the Democratic Party has a deep bench of talent to draw from, including governors and senators in competitive states.

There's no mystery why Pelosi and the establishment want a do-over rather than a succession. Harris had already become deeply unpopular with Americans long before this election cycle began. In fact, her favorables went underwater in mid-July 2021, a month before Biden's inverted during the Afghanistan disgrace. That's the last time any poll showed Harris' favorability rating in anything other than negative numbers. That followed a series of embarrassing media interviews and personal appearances that exposed her as an intellectual and policy lightweight, which prompted Biden to shelve her until now.

Not to mention the point Ben Shapiro made earlier today:

The real reason Biden was historically unpopular wasn't just his senility. It was his terrible policies. And Kamala Harris is the vice president of that administration. She is responsible for all of those policies, too.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 21, 2024

Yes, and her numbers reflect that as well as her political and rhetorical incompetence. As I wrote yesterday, Democrats remember the reality of Harris rather than the idea of Harris as a candidate:

That's one reason why polling at this time doesn't actually reflect any predictive accuracy. The idea of Kamala Harris as a candidate turned out to be a lot more attractive than the reality in 2019. She entered into the 2020 Democrat presidential primary as one of the favorites to win in a cycle where Dems demanded "diversity" on the ticket, and yet embarrassingly collapsed before the end of summer that year. She got her ass handed to her in debates by Tulsi Gabbard and withdrew by October 2019. On her way out, she questioned whether America was ready for a "woman of color" as President -- when it was Democrat voters that abandoned her. 

That's the proper context for any discussion of polling comparisons between Harris and Biden, or Harris and any other choice. Harris is only polling as well as she is because she hasn't been a visible part of the campaign until now. 

Biden has to know this. He and/or his team wisely sidelined her almost exactly three years ago after she began to prove Biden's incompetence in her selection as running mate, after all. So why endorse her on the way out? Either Biden's being loyal, or he wants to pull  dog-in-the-manger play on his way out for revenge against the coup plotters. Endorsing Harris makes it very difficult to keep her off the top of the ticket, although not necessarily impossible. And any fight to do so will now create a massive internal fight.

It may already be starting:

NEW --
CPC CHAIR PRAMILA JAYAPAL has endorsed Kamala Harris. pic.twitter.com/DqyfcLMTxC

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 21, 2024

We can expect Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others to quickly add their endorsements. In fact, AOC had already started venting about efforts by "corporate donors" to keep Harris away from the top spot in the Dump Biden coup. That rhetoric will ramp up quickly if Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, and the donors behind this push to force Biden out of a nomination he won in the primaries try to impose some sort of "open forum" replacement system at an open convention as a means to bypass Harris. 

Either way, though, Democrats may have made their situation even worse in the short run. They invalidated fifty state elections in their supposed bid to "protect democracy" and all but guaranteed a floor fight in Chicago no matter what happens with Harris. The entire exercise paints the party in the worst possible light. 

And maybe Biden wanted to make sure that happened. 

Addendum: The Clintons immediately endorsed Harris. Barack Obama ... didn't.

NEW

Former President Barack Obama praises President Biden in a new statement.

Obama, unlike the Clintons, does not endorse VP Harris in this statement. pic.twitter.com/1jcY40m6ik

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 21, 2024

Neither did Nancy Pelosi. Let the games begin.