IS GAME THEORY TOO DIFFICULT FOR POLITICAL STRATEGISTS?

Hill pundit Douglas MacKinnon asks, "Did political correctness and backroom dealing doom the Democratic ticket from the start?"  I suppose if you're a political pundit your salary depends on the superficialities.

It didn’t have to be this way. The Democratic National Committee as well as the Democratic powerbrokers behind the scenes could have engineered a much stronger and much more electable ticket. They simply chose not to. Why? In part, because they were afraid of the optics and the potential blowback.

That's the kind of thing you expect from people who say "at the end of the day" a lot, or speak of "articulating" a policy position.  Democrats knew about Dementia Joe's incapacity, and Flibbertigibbet's difficulties dealing with Normals.

One of the main tripwires was that, for political and survival reasons, they didn’t want to give any oxygen to the Republicans or Trump staff pushing that same scenario. Better to deny the obvious for as long as possible, so as not to give Team Trump an issue to exploit.

Arguably, the next major tripwire was that many Democrats — as well as many in the liberal media — truly did not feel Harris was up to the task of stepping in for Biden. They surely remembered 2019, during the 2020 Democratic primary, when no one voted for Harris. She had to drop out of the race before the Iowa caucuses. She did so because her campaign, which started off with a great deal of buzz and media attention, flopped with an embarrassing thud.

That first paragraph credits Team Trump with more competence than Democrats and their willing accomplices in the legacy media otherwise credit them with.

From there, the rationalizations get more convoluted.

There were several options to create a ticket that did not include Biden, Harris or Walz. But to do so, all roads would have to go through Harris herself.

One of the most obvious options would have been to ask or convince Harris to resign, and then replace her with someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or another proven vote-getter. If that swap were successful, Biden and the Democrats could have gotten even more creative. After swearing in Newsom as vice president, Biden could have then resigned himself a month or two later, making Newsom the sitting president with the power of the Oval Office behind him.

This form of political musical chairs does have some precedent in the Nixon White House. On Oct. 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. Next, under the process mandated by the 25th Amendment, Nixon replaced Agnew with Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich.). Then, after Nixon resigned and Ford became president in 1974, Ford hand-picked former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president. Whiplash, anyone?

But again, to pull off something that creative — and potentially desperately needed, if one wanted to hold on to the White House in 2024 — Democrats would have to travel on the road leading right up to Harris’s office. For understandable reasons centered around political correctness and the potential fallout from such a switch, no one on the Democratic side seemed anxious to ask Harris to step aside, let alone try to convince her.

Of course, prior to her selection, then-Democratic nominee Biden had made it clear that he was only going to pick a woman and quite possibly a woman of color. Enter the slippery slope of filling positions via “identity politics.” In this case, Harris became not only the first female vice president, but the first vice president of color.

Understandably and quite rightfully, that infused millions of women and people of color with pride and hope. But the flipside of that American “first” is that Harris was all but untouchable, unless she herself decided that she might not be up to the job of president. Which she obviously did not.

The next opportunity came at the Democratic National Convention in August. The Democratic National Committee could have opened the nominating process — as some Democrats encouraged — to nominate the most qualified candidate in the most open and above-board manner. Unfortunately, for Democrats seeking that option, the powerbrokers behind the scenes — likely including former President Obama and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — slammed the door on that option with the elevation of Harris.

So here we are. “Identity politics” picked Harris. Backroom insiders then “convinced” Biden to withdraw from the race. Next, Harris and her backers used identity politics to select Walz as her running mate.

Is Harris-Walz the “dream ticket” most Democrats hoped would lead them to victory? Doubtful. Could a stronger ticket have been created? Yes.

We can defer judgement on the strength of the ticket until the votes are counted.  Donald Trump is still capable of being his own worst enemy.

Mr MacKinnon, however, complicates everything that comes after "all roads would have to go through Harris herself."  I've broken that path of play down previously.  There's another way to present the argument, but we're still analyzing a game tree.  In this game, Kamala Harris, as vice president, has a claim on the presidency in the event of the office being vacated by death or incapacitation.

I'll introduce another player, Nature, that makes moves determining how the game evolves.

First, Nature might call the sitting president home.  Whether that happens in the next three months, or sometime after the Biden-Harris ticket is re-elected, Kamala Harris, as duly elected vice president, is sworn in.  If those "backroom insiders" calculate that the Biden-Harris ticket cannot win, what argument do they make to the vice-president that she must submit to a snap primary should their argument be that the current president will not last another term?

Second, Nature might deliver an incapacitating event to the sitting president sometime before the election.  (The analysis for after the election is similar, but moot in the event of a Trump victory, apart from all those 45-47 hats and tees being rendered obsolete.)  It takes a majority of the department heads and the vice president to bring a 25th Amendment case to Congress.  Thus, if those "backroom insiders" are using the threat of a 25th Amendment action (the hard way) to secure the president's renunciation of a second term (the easy way) that threat ... turns Kamala Harris into the acting, and de facto incumbent, president.

All those considerations render any claims by the vice president to offer that new way forward pretty silly.  Perhaps, though, in the Wolkenkuckucksheim of electoral politics, the backroom insiders maneuver the current president off the ticket, the current vice president to the top of the ticket, and, provided the current president can do enough of his duties to appear presidential for two more weeks, the current vice president can posture about being different.  "Then, the threat to remove the president the hard way is credible, and the president's renunciation of the nomination while finishing his term is a preferable outcome to being tossed."

Meanwhile, here in reality, the baby formula is still in locked cases at the nearby grocery store.