Brett Stephens: Gail, when we last spoke, I asked you if you would join me in calling on Democrats to find a new nominee if Joe Biden had a disastrous debate. You said it would have to be “super disastrous.”
Did the president’s performance Thursday night meet your definition of “great”?
Gail Collins: Bret, I thought of you throughout the debate. You were worried that Biden would “lose his mind over an obvious lapse in memory, a slurred sentence, or a disturbing blank stare.”
I pretty much ignored your concerns, and I was, uh, kind of wrong. But I said I would join you “if the president suddenly goes blank and stares at the screen in silence or forgets where he’s talking…”
But hey, it wasn’t that bad. Instead.
Brett: This was not the case ?
Gaëlle: Okay, I’m starting to come around to your thinking. Biden should not be the nominee. Even if he makes a comeback after the old-fashioned debate moments, we have months before the election. And years before he retires for good if he wins.
Brett: What I am 99% sure of: he can’t.
What America saw last week wasn’t a guy having a bad debate night. It was the man Robert Hur, the special counsel in the Biden documents case, described earlier this year as a “friendly, well-meaning older man with a bad memory.” Hur owes a public apology from all the pompous pundits who pounced on him for telling the truth. And Americans owe the Democratic Party better than a president who is sinking into senescence while his dishonest aides pretend that everything about the president’s health is all good.
So will it be, or should it be, Kamala Harris, as our colleague Lydia Polgreen argued last week?
Gaëlle: She certainly deserves her chance – Harris did a good job as vice president and has overcome many of the political flaws people found in her before. Maybe because she’s young enough to orchestrate a turnaround. Sigh.
Brett: I leave aside our long-standing disagreements over Harris’ performance. I’m just thinking about the idea that someone who turns 60 later this year – the same age as Lyndon Johnson in the last full year of his presidency – now finds himself at the younger end of the spectrum policy.
Gaëlle: Yes, there was a time when politicians over 50 were not considered minors. But when it comes to the options for a presidential candidate after Biden, I can’t imagine Harris’ selection being automatic. You have strong Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan that voters have a right to look up to. Plus a bunch of good Democratic senators.
And personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing some intense competition as these people vie for the nomination. Which I assume would ultimately be decided at the convention in August, right?
Brett: I think so: If Biden released his delegates by announcing that he was not running, those delegates would be the ones who would make the decision. And five or six weeks of open competition would do the party and the country a lot of good, while giving Biden a chance to focus on governing and be treated like a statesman for putting the country’s interests ahead of his own ambition.
Gaëlle: Let us pray that the statesman does not choose to continue running…
Brett: As for the other candidates, I definitely see Whitmer, the governor of a must-win purple state, as a serious contender. Ditto for Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Wes Moore of Maryland and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. Newsom and other deep-blue state governors, not so much. The key to this election will be an appeal to the political center, not the liberal and progressive base. I can also see Harris remaining in the veep slot or being replaced by someone who provides racial or gender balance for the ticket.
Gael: Well, let’s see which liberals do a good job of delivering a moderate sales pitch.
Brett: Can we move the topic to the Supreme Court? Lots of big decisions last week, including one upholding the city’s ban on public camping. Any thoughts on that one or any of the others?
Gael: The issue of public camping is a tricky one. Having lived through a time in New York City where people slept everywhere in parks and on sidewalks, I don’t want to make it easy. Especially when so many people do it while abusing alcohol or drugs.
Bret: This is exactly what residents of cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, are experiencing today.
Gael: But I couldn’t help but notice that the city that banned public camping does very, very little to provide shelter.
We can’t kick out the homeless when they have no other decent choice. Do you agree?
Brett: This is a difficult problem. One problem is that homeless people often refuse shelter even when it is available to them – often because they don’t want to follow the rules, such as not being allowed to use drugs on site. Another problem is that government regulations make it unaffordable for cities to build “affordable housing,” as our colleague Ezra Klein explained in a column last year. But I have absolutely no problem giving local governments the power to clean up homeless encampments. Other city dwellers also have rights, notably to safe and hygienic public spaces.
Gaëlle: Staying in the city offers options.
Brett: The other major court decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, involves the end of what legal scholars call “Chevron deference,” a 40-year-old doctrine that held that courts should defer to federal agencies when interpreting laws that the agencies were tasked with implementing, as long as their interpretations were “reasonable.” Let’s say you think that’s a bad decision….
Gaëlle: In fact, you have a choice between the popularly elected government and the Supreme Court. Who decides policy? The Court, surprisingly, is in favor of the Supreme Court. I know we rely on the Supreme Court to overturn politicians when they make deeply unconstitutional choices. But it’s about who we want to see making the day-to-day decisions.
Not happy to let people down. And you?
Bret: I have some sympathy for the liberal dissenters in this case, because the decision means that judges with little expertise on a given subject will now be tasked with interpreting laws that often require considerable expertise. On the other hand, the Chevron deference doctrine allowed Congress to pass ambiguously worded laws and unelected federal bureaucrats to interpret those laws as they saw fit without accountability. Perhaps now Congress will write clearer laws and federal agencies will no longer operate with such freedom, often to the detriment of small businesses struggling under the weight of costly regulations that were never enacted by elected lawmakers.
Gael: Well, it looks like one of us is more concerned about government regulations than the other. What a surprise !
Brett: On another topic: Last week, Rep. Jamaal Bowman lost his Westchester primary to a moderate Democratic challenger. But in Colorado, Lauren Boebert won her primary by switching districts. Any lessons here?
Gaëlle: Boebert is a political nut, but she’s smart enough to know that the key to easy success is to run in a district that won’t give you any problems. It’s much the same saga we see when members of Congress start pressuring state lawmakers to redraw redistricting that gives their party the best chance of easy victories. possible.
As for Bowman, a good lesson to be learned from his defeat is that if you are a member of Congress in a hurry to get to your seat to vote, you should not pull the fire alarm for a quick entrance.
It was certainly difficult to support him, but I was not happy to see him lose to the Westchester County Executive, which is essentially going to shift more power to voters who want to stay away from my suburbs.
Your thoughts?
Brett: Bowman richly deserved to lose his primary, not only because of his far-left views on the Middle East and his alarm at the Capitol, but also for sheer political malfeasance: If you represent a district with a lot of centrist Jewish voters, maybe you should try to be more responsive to their concerns?
But the two races, Bowman’s and Boebert’s, also tell us something about the two parties they represent. Democratic primary voters just got rid of one of their party’s most extremist voices. Republican primary voters just scored a resounding victory for their own extremist. That kind of sums up the current state of our politics.
Gael: Bret, I’ve gotten used to your Biden-voting conservatism, but I still get very excited when you seem ready to divorce your entire party.
Bret: That divorce took place some time ago. In the meantime, I hope readers won’t miss Clay Risen’s obituary for Kinky Friedman, of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, mystery novelist, Texas Monthly columnist, three-time failed political candidate, and writer of immortal songs that are mostly unspeakable in a family newspaper. Among the obituary’s piquant details:
In 1984, while walking down the street looking for cigars, he saw a man assaulting a woman. He separated them and waited for the police to arrive.
He later learned that the woman was Cathy Smith, who had been indicted in 1983 for injecting comedian John Belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine.
“Of the city’s 12 million people, it had to be her,” he told Texas Monthly in 1993.
The word for it: priceless.
