On Politics: How Democrats learned to love the smoke-filled room again
Good evening. It took less than two days for Vice President Kamala Harris to secure commitments from enough delegates to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, so my colleague Charles Homans is here to tell us how a party that spent much of the past year divided fell in line. Then, I'm brat — I mean, back — with a look at that meme. — Jess Bidgood
How Democrats learned to love the smoke-filled room againAfter President Biden's debate performance last month unleashed existential doubt about the future of his presidential campaign, political veterans and pundits wondered aloud whether the party was walking into a sequel to its disastrous summer of 1968. That year, against the backdrop of a nation-dividing foreign conflict, an unpopular president decided not to seek re-election and anointed his vice president as his successor. The decision set off a momentous clash at that year's Democratic National Convention between the left and the party establishment. Unpopular president not seeking re-election? Check. Anointment of his vice president? Check. A clash between the left and the establishment? As of now, not so much. The 1968 cataclysm shattered the old order of the party and ultimately produced the modern primary rules, which place most of the power for picking a nominee in the hands of voters — the very system Democrats will be bypassing if they nominate Harris for president, as delegates and party leaders have indicated they will. But the initial response to Biden's endorsement of Harris has shown that few Democrats have an appetite for 1968-style intraparty conflict, and many are happy to accept the informal decision-making of party elites: to learn to love the old politics of smoke-filled rooms again, however briefly. The left stands by Biden, and by HarrisOne of the most significant differences between then and now is that influential voices on the party's left — the key element in the confrontations of 1968 — both stood by Biden through the last days of his campaign and quickly welcomed his replacement. In the hours after Biden announced his decision, a majority of the left-most Democrats in Congress — who had been among the last vocal holdouts for Biden's staying in the race — announced their endorsements of Harris, including every member of the Squad, the informal group of high-profile left-wing House members, save for Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. "It's an open process. Anybody can run," said Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida, a grass roots activist elected to Congress in 2022 who campaigned for Biden in New Hampshire this month and quickly endorsed Harris on Sunday. "But nobody's doing it, because she's done a good job of bringing together the coalition." Outside progressive groups, too, have broadly welcomed Harris as a replacement. "I think pragmatically, Harris is best-positioned," said Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, the organization Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont founded in 2016. The group this year had backed an effort to get Democratic primary voters to vote "uncommitted" as a protest of Mr. Biden's support for Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Our Revolution put out a statement on Sunday saying it was "hopeful" about Harris's candidacy, though it stopped short of endorsing her. The fact that groups like Geevarghese's have lined up so quickly behind her speaks to an awareness of the perils of reliving the events of 56 years ago. "Look, ideally there would have been an open process," Geevarghese said. "Unfortunately, I think we're just so late in the game." Why 2024 isn't 1968The specter of 1968 has hung over Democrats since last fall, when it became clear that they would be going into the 2024 election backing an incumbent president with historically low popularity levels who supported a conflict — the war in Gaza — that was broadly opposed by the left of his own party. Early in 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, his presidency battered by the Vietnam War, announced that he would not run for re-election, and he later backed his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as his successor. Humphrey won only 2 percent of the primary vote, but he secured a majority of delegates thanks to powerful party bosses at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — and over the fiery opposition of antiwar activists. Days of violent clashes between protesters and police ensued. But the similarities between 1968 and 2024 are outweighed by the differences, according to Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University historian and author of a recent history of the Democratic Party, "What It Took to Win." "In 1968, the party was split about the war, and to a degree, how much to push on racial equality," said Kazin, who protested the 1968 convention as a member of Students for a Democratic Society. This year, "they want to win more than they want to push a moral issue." Today, the U.S. government's support for Israel's prosecution of the war, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, continues to infuriate the left. But few polls have shown Gaza to be a motivating issue for most Democratic voters, particularly in a race against former President Donald Trump, who as president was unwaveringly pro-Israel. Only 2 percent of Democrats and independents named the conflict as their top issue in a Times/Sienna poll this month. And for those for whom it is, Biden's withdrawal from the race has complicated the efforts to use his campaign as leverage to push for changes in White House policy. "We are going to be regathering and figuring out next steps," said Layla Elabed, the campaign manager of Listen to Michigan, which mounted one of the most successful "uncommitted" efforts in the primaries. (She is also Tlaib's sister.) Elabed and others say they are still waiting on movement on the issue from Harris, who has at times presented herself as more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but she has not differed from the administration on substance. Frost, who voted against a stand-alone funding package for Israel in the House in February and is skipping tomorrow's speech before Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said that he was hopeful, noting that Harris had chosen not to preside over Netanyahu's speech. "She's someone who I know has been fighting behind the scenes and in the White House to make sure that we're more aggressive on making sure that there's no innocent Palestinians dying," he said. An effort to win over the left that paid offBiden may also have headed off a clash with the left by building a relatively amicable relationship with its leaders in Congress and enacting domestic policies long sought by progressives. "You had a president who seemingly was not just giving lip service to progressives, but people like Bernie for the first time in their careers felt like they had a seat at the actual table," said Ari Rabin-Havt, a former adviser to Sanders and the deputy manager of his 2020 presidential campaign. "It was a very real relationship." Harris's new supporters have made clear that they are not embracing her candidacy unconditionally. "I think progressives want to hear that she's going to run a White House just like Joe Biden had, where progressives had a seat at the table," Geevarghese said. But he also conceded that they did not have much in the way of other choices. And in a poll of his own organization's membership after the debate, he said, 97 percent said that the ability to beat Trump was the main quality they were looking for in a candidate. This, Kazin said, was ultimately the biggest difference from 1968. "Trump's a great unifier for Democrats," he said. "Nixon was not that figure in '68."
How do you do, fellow bratsAccording to the electropop singer Charli XCX, Kamala is brat. Jake Tapper is a little confused. Tim Kaine is on board. And Charli herself is unavailable for interviews, although I tried. The worst thing to do with a meme is to try to explain it. A CNN segment attempting to do so came with a real "how do you do, fellow kids" energy. The important thing to know here is that a dance-pop artist you might not have heard of, who recently released a terrific and irreverent album called "Brat," has blessed her wildly committed fan base's embrace of Harris, and more memes have blossomed. There are two things about this development that bear understanding. The "brat" memes in recent days have blended (sometimes literally) with a different set of memes that were percolating well before Biden stepped aside. Those, of course, are the jokes about a coconut tree and Harris's penchant for talking about "what can be, unburdened by what has been." First, the existence of these memes speaks to an organic explosion of online enthusiasm that Biden himself was never able to muster over the course of this campaign. And second, some of them are drawn from Republican caricatures of Harris. I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in the summer of 2021, and it was striking how often the organizers played a video showing Harris laughing, turning her into an object of ridicule. Now, as my colleague Amanda Hess wrote, her goofiest, giggliest and least coherent lines have been reinterpreted as hypnotic and fun. And that may be neutralizing a key line of attack. As Harris's online fans repackage her quirks, one thing has changed. Trump had been calling her "Laffin' Kamala," a nickname he spelled onstage at a rally. But on Tuesday, my colleague Michael Gold noticed, he dropped that name in social media posts, switching instead to "Lyin' Kamala." — Jess Bidgood Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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