Biden's too old, say ... Senate Dems

High-level Democrats are rallying to President Biden’s reelection, not because they think it’s in the best interest of the country to have an 82-year-old start a second term but because they fear the potential alternative: the nomination of Kamala Harris and election of Donald Trump. …

There was the senator who said few Democrats in the chamber want Biden to run again but that the party had to devise “an alignment of interest” with the president to get him off the “narcotic” of the office; there was the governor who mused about just how little campaigning Biden would be able to do; and there was the House member who, after saying that, of course, Democrats should renominate the president told me to turn off my phone and then demanded to know who else was out there and said Harris wasn’t an option.

My favorite, though, was the Democratic lawmaker who recalled speaking to Jill Biden and, hoping to plant a seed about a one-term declaration of victory, told her how her husband should be celebrated for saving democracy. When I asked if I could use any of that on the record, the lawmaker shot back: “absolutely not.”

(via Off the Press)

[Ironically, the best way to get rid of Harris is to get rid of Biden. If Biden retires, Harris would have to compete for the nomination — and she’d be terrible at it. That might temporarily cause some butthurt within the party’s demographic competitors, but any failure would be primarily on Harris herself. If Democrats try to dump Harris from a Biden 2024 ticket, on the other hand, that would be precisely the kind of star-chamber move that would make a victim and a cause out of Harris. The best way to push Harris out is to force her to stand on her own. — Ed]