The Secret Advantage for VP Harris

In a brief, bonus, mid-week Dispatch, I dig into how the Vice President’s late-breaking leap to the top of the Democratic ticket works to her advantage.

Back in January, I argued that it was too early for Nikki Haley to drop out of the race. Some of the same logic that I articulated then now applies to the weekend’s stunning but welcome news that President Biden was standing down and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic ticket.

Back in January, I articulated the Brad Berens Rule of presidential politics: if it's a candidate's turn to get a party's nomination, that candidate always loses. Here’s the relevant snippet from that piece (and please forgive me for quoting myself):

I first saw this in 1996 when Bob Dole ran against incumbent Bill Clinton. Dole had unsuccessfully sought the nomination several times before. In 1996, no other GOP candidate had enough juice with the party establishment to beat Dole for the nomination, but that wasn't enough for him to win the general election.

This isn't only a Republican phenomenon: we saw the same thing in 2016 when there was no Democratic nominee who could beat the Clinton political machine, which meant it was Hillary Clinton's turn to be the nominee. She lost.

I could make the same argument for Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004, and McCain in 2008: each time, they got the nomination because it was their turn. They each had establishment backing, and nobody could outmaneuver them when it came to internal party politics, but internal party politics don't matter as much in a general election.

This is good news for Nikki Haley because she is, in a bizarre way, running against two incumbents, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Although there are immense differences between Biden and Trump, when compared to Haley those differences start to fade away.

Inevitability is a weakness in American politics. Both Biden and Trump were inevitable long before the first primaries. Kamala Harris is not inevitable.

There’s an important difference between “not inevitable” and avoidable. Litotes, in classical rhetoric, is the word we use to describe a linguistic double negative, which is different than a double negative in math. In math, - (-1) (negative negative one) is identical to 1 because the two negatives cancel each other out. That is not true in language, where there’s a big difference between happy and not unhappy or between good and not bad.

Abstract image of a double negative created using DALL-E.*

We humans live in that twilight zone, the gray area when somebody says, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

Even though many people were unhappy about it, it was Joe Biden’s turn (again) in 2024. Even though many people were unhappy about it, it was Donald Trump’s turn (again) in 2024.

2024 was not Harris’ turn to be the Democratic candidate.

That’s good news for her and bad news for Trump.

Thanks for reading this bonus Dispatch. See you Sunday.

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* Image prompt: “Please create an abstract representation of a double negative.”