RUTHFULLY YOURS

Imagine an American time traveler from a century ago showing up unannounced in 2024. After he spends a few days marveling at the giant, rotating logs of meat that Greek restaurants use to make gyros, you tell him there’s a presidential election going on and that the Republican candidate incited a violent attempt to overturn the results of the previous election — oh and he’s also a convicted felon.

“Well, I guess the election is over, why even bother with the voting?” he asks.

“No, it’s actually a tie,” you respond, as he gives you a confused look similar to the one he directed at the sweaty, spinning meat.

Of course, in order to win a presidential election, a candidate doesn’t have to be ethical or even felony-free. He or she simply has to be one electoral vote better than the other person. And if the other party can’t field a plausible candidate, it’s not like both lose. The least worst one wins the nation’s grandest prize.

That is how, in 2016, Donald Trump ended up beating Hillary Clinton, perhaps the only candidate less likeable than he is. And a lack of likeability in the Democratic candidate is why, despite his significant shortcomings, the former president is now tied with the current vice president.

As if shopping for candidates at an outlet mall, Democrats for the last three elections have pulled their nominees off the “irregular” pile. All their candidates had significant flaws: Clinton was picked because she was seen as the heir apparent after Democratic primary voters passed her by in 2008. In 2020, elderly Joe Biden won the nomination because panicked Democrats saw the unelectable Bernie Sanders racing toward the nomination. And in 2024, unpopular Vice President Kamala Harris wrested away the nomination because panicked Democrats saw Joe Biden racing toward cognitive decline and thus certain defeat.

But imagine there was a universe in which Democrats could start fresh and pick the perfect candidate. Say there was no existing infrastructure that favored incumbents and insiders, and progressives were instead free to choose whoever they thought gave them the best chance to win. What would that perfect candidate look like?

To begin with, that candidate would be from a state the Democrats need to win. He or she would have roots in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, or any of the other states close enough to flip to Democrats. That means the candidate wouldn’t be from a liberal enclave like, say, California, so all the progressive buffoonery happening in that state couldn’t be dumped on the candidate like a can of blue paint.

This hypothetical dream candidate would not be a vice president in a historically unpopular administration. For the incumbent VP, this is the worst possible situation: When you run for president, you will be blamed for every bad thing happening in America even though you didn’t steer the current administration’s agenda. So you have to engage in a rhetorical Cha Cha Slide: trying to take credit for the good things that happened during the last four years while distancing yourself from the terrible things that happened over that time. At some point, you’ll have to just throw up your hands, invoke the Selina Meyer defense (the president didn’t once return any of my calls), and try to run, improbably, as the candidate of change. (“This is about the future!”)

A better résumé for the ideal candidate would entail very little legislative background at the congressional level and more experience running a state, where the stakes are much lower because any missteps you might make typically don’t become national news. If you’re the governor of a battleground state, you can actually effect legislation, as national news reporters haven’t been camped out on your front lawn for four years. There was a reason no U.S. senator was elected to the presidency between 1960 and 2008; the very type of bloviation and self-puffery it took to stand out among 99 other national politicians turned people off, and by the time those blowhards decided to run, people already knew too much about them. (Although in 2024, the words “Bloviation and Self-Puffery” should now adorn the Presidential Seal.)

The perfect Democratic candidate would not have previously run for president, as the extreme positions needed to win a Democratic primary can also harm electability in a general election. Sure, sometimes candidates can take wild positions to win the primary and then walk them back in the same election, but in that case, things are happening too quickly for it really to sink in. It probably isn’t a coincidence that neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama had previously run for president: They were blank slates unencumbered by terrible positions they would have marinated in for four years, as has been the case with Kamala Harris.

And boy, has that been the case with Harris. From wanting to ban fracking, to outlawing private health insurance, to mandating the manufacture of electric vehicles, to decriminalizing border crossings, to supporting mandatory gun buybacks, Harris has quickly fled from her past self. The only option she has left now is to declare that she has never heard of anyone named “Kamala Harris.”

And speaking of both Bill Clinton and Obama, the ideal Democratic candidate should be a compelling public speaker. Harris has undergone a pretty drastic makeover since her campaign began but has previously spent years as an interlocutory laughingstock. Of course, nothing can match Trump’s damaged utterances, which sound like they’ve been thrown down a flight of stairs, but if contrast is what Democrats are looking for, they need a candidate who knows her way around a comprehensible sentence.

Of course, there are plenty of other characteristics Democrats would want in their perfect candidate. It would certainly be helpful if their nominee had actually been running for the presidency for more than three months before the election, to let voters get to know her. (On the other hand, an extended campaign could actually erode the candidate’s support, as may be the case with Harris.) It would certainly be helpful if the nominee had a strong sense of humor; politicians can paper over a whole lot of personality flaws with a clever turn of phrase and a light touch.

As observant readers have by now deduced, Kamala Harris possesses virtually none of the characteristics enumerated above. It is why, despite Donald Trump’s rotten approval numbers, the sitting vice president is still struggling to gain traction. She has no geographic advantage, she isn’t a dynamic orator, she is saddled with both her previous positions and those of the incumbent president, the American public doesn’t know much about her, and what they do know is that she doesn’t really stand for anything.

But as previous elections have shown, Harris doesn’t have to be good. She just has to be one delegate better than the other guy.