He calls it "The DNC Euphoria Wave Strategy."
Pick a random, but historically very short, time frame and you get the old saying "[time frame] is forever in politics." The usual minimum I see for that phrasing is in the three to six month range.
We are now less than four months from the 2024 presidential election ... a lot can still happen.
But if we take it as a given that among the things that are not going to happen are:
- Some kind of miraculous cognitive/energy bounce-back on Joe Biden's part or
- Some kind of moral/legal lapse on Trump's part that costs him the support of people who have continued to support him, or at least consider supporting him, after nearly eight years of too many moral/legal lapse stories to count;
Then the Democrats have two choices:
- They can reconcile themselves to losing the presidential election, possibly losing control of the US Senate, and almost certainly not gaining control of the House; or
- They can nominate someone other than Biden for president.
If the latter, they need to choose wisely and think about what they hope to accomplish.
If they're convinced that nobody can beat Trump, then they might nominate a pair of obvious losers (partial list to choose from: Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Beto O'Rourke) just to get those losers out of the way by letting them crater this year so that the field is clear for someone viable in 2028. I don't think that's a great strategy -- "fuck it, we're not even really going to try this year" has longer-term consequences of its own -- but I suppose they might go that way.
If they're convinced that someone could beat Trump, they need to pick that someone. It needs to be someone who already has near-100% name recognition. It needs to be someone most voters at least like (to persuade "swing" voters") and Democratic voters unconditionally love (to get and keep the base highly motivated for more than three months).
The name I've heard mentioned most often for such a candidate is Michelle Obama. Everyone knows who she is. Most Americans seem to like her. Most Democrats seem to adore her. She has experience on the campaign trail and with donor relations. She doesn't have a personal political record to live down, but she picks up at least some reflected credit for her husband's record (as you may recall, that husband was elected TWICE).
Borders mentions Obama, and also Oprah Winfrey.
I don't think the latter would be a good pick, for several reason. A big one is that she's 70 years old and the electorate seems at least somewhat age-sensitive lately. Obama is ten years younger, meaning that even after eight years in office she would still be younger than either Trump or Biden were at their first inaugurations.
There might be other good "euphoria wave" picks, but Obama does fit the bill.
She would instantly re-energize her party's voter and donor bases, and that energy would likely remain high through election day.
She would also instantly re-set the race where "reluctant or not fully decided" voters are concerned.
If this election cycle was a baseball game, right now the Democrats would be in the bottom of the ninth inning, down by three runs with no one on base and with the count 0 and 2 on a very weak batter. What are the chances that that weak batter, and two others, get hits to load the bases, then a fourth batter hits a home run to win the game?
A "euphoria wave" strategy would make this election a whole new ball game.
It's also useful to recall that this business of everyone knowing by April or May who the major party nominees were going to be is very recent -- the "national binding primary" system only dates from 1972. Even after that, in 1976, there were enough uncommitted delegates at the Republican National Convention that it wasn't until the actual balloting that the public knew whether Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan would be the nominee. That was in late August.
Whether it feels like it or not, this is actually early days.
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