Keller: Kamala Harris brings a big change to the presidential race
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global.
BOSTON - Joe Biden was never a fancy talker, or even a great thinker. But he's always been a pragmatist, a practitioner of the art of the possible. He and close friend Ted Kennedy were fully capable of indulging in the rhetorical excess that paints their work as a virtuous crusade. But they shared a common advocacy principle: if you can get half a loaf, take it, and go back later for the other half.
Giving up this run for re-election was the ultimate example of Biden's pragmatism. Amid the cascade of bad polling news for Biden, one result surely had to stand out.
Presidential polls
The latest Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of Massachusetts voters showed a jaw-dropping 64% of local Democrats and Democratic-leaning indies wanted Biden off the ticket. Overall support for him now compared with the last Suffolk poll in April showed him under the 50% mark, a flashing red dashboard light of epic proportions. He had dropped seven points among women, his strongest supporters. Backing from Hispanics was down six percent.
In poker, they call what Biden did a lay down, a decision to fold that prevents catastrophe and keeps you (or, in this case, your party) in the game. It's not a derogatory term. And while it's hardly a slam dunk, a Democratic victory in November will enshrine Biden in political lore as a selfless genius.
Kamala Harris
So now what?
Step one is to make sure Kamala Harris is cemented as the nominee, preferably well before the party convenes in Chicago August 19. The Democrats need time to get all the logistics straightened out, including funding, ballot access, and game plan.
In the meantime, they have to make a key decision: is she running as Josephine Biden, the faithful understudy who steps in and reads the script without revision? Or will she look for a way to establish a separate political identity that avoids saddling her with some of Biden's polling deficits?
Donald Trump
And the Republicans have to do some scrambling as well. Their entire campaign has been based on exploiting Biden's weakness and creating new areas of grievance. All that effort they put into demonizing the odious Hunter Biden now looks like a waste.
Donald Trump's nickname for the vice president as of his most recent rally was "laughing Kamala," not his best effort. "She's crazy," he added, an epithet some voters will surely recognize as commonly applied by racists to Black women who speak up.
And now it's Trump who is the oldest major-party presidential nominee ever. He has left a video trail of cognitively awkward moments in recent months. If the Democrats have anything to say about it, the age issue is now in the GOP's court.
There were indications that Biden had lost the room even before that awful debate performance. Voters struggling with the cost of living and inflationary prices that still haven't receded and lingering fallout from the pandemic on their kids were tuning out his claims of progress.
Now, it'll be a new voice making the case. And all those who've been begging for years for curtailment of the endless American presidential election process will now get their wish.
