How Kamala Can Best “Earn” the Nomination

This piece will be appearing as a newspaper op/ed (the week of July 22, 2024) if events don’t first overtake it. Postscript: Actually, I pulled the piece before it ran. The way the Democratic world surged into unity, and became mobilized and energized, so swiftly upon Biden’s withdrawing and endorsing Kamala Harris achieved so much of what I’ve hoped the “process” might achieve that I now consider my idea, expressed below, to be obsolete. Prolonging the drama, as I’ve proposed, now appears to me an unhelpful interruption of the good coalescence of forces that is already occurring.

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President Biden did what America needed for him to do—finally accepting that he was not the best person to lead the current political battle, where the preservation of the American form of government is at stake.

Biden went a step further and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris. With great speed, the Democratic world has been coalescing around that choice. Major political leaders, state delegations to the upcoming convention, and even the main figures who might also have been considered contenders for the top of the ticket have come out for Kamala Harris.

It looks as though the nomination is VP Harris’s for the taking.

It is a defensible outcome. The Party is clearly eager to end the excruciating uncertainty of recent weeks, to unify behind an entirely plausible candidate, and to get on with waging the campaign to save American Democracy from authoritarianism.

Defensible, but short of ideal. There was a better way to arrive at the new champion of the pro-Democracy cause. And that better way is still possible: a well-designed contest that empowers the 3000+ delegates to the upcoming convention to choose the best nominee.

(And in such a must-win election, “best” means most likely to keep the powers of the Presidency out of the hands of a would-be dictator who has claimed that as President he would be above the law.)

(I’ll get to the design of that contest in a moment.)

At this point, with the nomination almost already Kamala’s for the taking, she herself is the only one who can call for such a contest.

(The fact that she is a “woman of color” means that there are sensitivities among core constituencies of the Democratic Party that would likely flare up if it appeared to people that anyone was trying to snatch the nomination away from her.)

At the same time, there are more powerful ways for the Democrats, and quite possibly better for Kamala as well – to launch their new champion than what’s happening now, with her crown having been bestowed by the endorsement from one person, then gratefully ratified by a Party eager to end the uncertainty and the struggle.

Vice President Harris herself graciously responded to Biden’s endorsement by pledging herself to “earn” (as well as to “win”) this nomination.

It is unclear what she meant by “earn.” Was it just a matter of proving herself worthy of the nomination that was landing in her lap? Or was she expressing a willingness to prove herself the best choice in some kind of legitimate contest where the choosers considered the merits of competitors?

Because of the imperatives of winning, the latter would be better for the nation.

Given the huge stakes for the whole of the American people, this nomination is too important to be the decision of any one person – even a President of the United States, and even if the rest of the Party agreeably jumps on board.

Better if the Party could proceed from here into a competition that would be seen by all as fair, that would unify behind a candidate that the collective wisdom of the Party has determined is their best bet for winning (and thus saving our constitutional order).

But, with the crown already being placed on her head, only Kamala Harris herself can suggest that well-designed contest. If she – emulating the “nation before self” virtues of President Biden – were to declare that the way she wants to earn the nomination is by opening up the process to other worthy possibilities, she would demonstrate heroic leadership.

Kamala might call for a process to unfold along these lines:

• She would invite her potential competitors to take back their endorsements of her, and join her in a contest – to begin before the convention — in which each would deliver speeches of 15-20 minutes “trying out” for how they would appeal to the American people to elect them and defeat Trump.

The audience would include the delegates, but would likely also get national television coverage.

• She could assure the Party there need be no chaos at the convention, because through ranked-choice voting the convention could quickly arrive at a winner. (As ranked choice voting always leads to one candidate getting more than 50%.)

Of course, inviting such a contest would mean putting at risk her place at the top of the ticket. But there’s a good chance that this would be better for Kamala as well.

• That kind of heroic leadership, combined with all she already has going for her, makes it likely that she would win that contest. So the risk seems limited.
• Also, if she won that competition, she would be launched into the general election campaign much more powerful than she would be just as the Biden-anointed one.

Good for Kamala maybe, but surely good for America.

Not only would the winner of that contest – Kamala or someone else – represent the Party’s collective judgment about who would be most likely to win that must-win election.

But also a national audience would be exposed to speeches – from the Party’s best giving their best – that would tell the American people what they most need to know in order to protect and preserve the heritage our founders bequeathed to us.