When the smoke clears, we’d better all be aligned on the only side that matters: Democracy

By Laura Haight
President, Dem Women of Greenville County

I don’t know about all of you, but I am exhausted from the events of the past few weeks. The events themselves – the debate, the court rulings – have been one thing, but the unending anti-Biden analysis has been mind numbing.

So I want to talk for a focus here on operational thinking. Operational thinking is not about making things perfect, or even better. It’s about keeping things going. When a critical system fails, you cannot take the time to figure out what happened, you cannot spend time thinking about what it might cost to fix, or start casting around for a replacement. You’ve got a job to do and you have to work around it. 

A lot of critical systems are failing:

• The Supreme Court has anointed Trump with presumptive immunity.
• Southern states are comfortable enough with the court’s decisions to try testing a big issue: Religion in the classroom. In Tennessee, every classroom will soon have its own copy of the 10 commandments; in Oklahoma, the state superintendent of education announced that teachers will soon be required to teach the bible.
• And Project 2025 has shown us exactly what a Trump presidency would look like. The president of the Heritage Foundation said last week: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” That should be a wake up call for anyone who entertains the idea of not voting, or a protest vote, or “maybe Trump’s not so bad.” 

This is where we are: The house is on fire and this is not the time to start thinking about new furniture or a bathroom redo.

There is no joy, no good news, in what may or may not be happening to Joe Biden. It’s not an “opportunity” to get someone younger, someone more diverse, someone more exciting, a woman. It is a tragedy. Certainly for President Biden and his family, and for us as a country. Because he has been an excellent president, who seems to be showing signs of diminished cognitive capability.

But the house is on fire and we have to stay focused on that. Polls may move the needle this week or next, potentially leaving us with a choice. Biden or … who? 

My view: If Biden does not withdraw, I am not sure there is a mechanism to force him out. And if that’s the case, we must recognize reality. In a world of Biden vs. Trump, I would choose a diminished Biden every day and twice on Sunday. Because Biden at his best has given us amazing results in the past 3 ½ years and if he is slowing down, he will still have an effective vice president and cabinet. They will stand when he can’t; they will protect our democracy. 

The house will not burn down under his watch.

If Biden withdraws, it must be Kamala Harris. First, she is the vice president; the person we’ve already elected to stand in for the president if he were unable to serve. Second, she is an experienced legislator who knows both the Congress and the executive branch, and has been Biden’s partner in the legislative achievements of the past 3.5 years. And finally, not to be discounted, she is the only one legally entitled to touch the $240 million currently in the campaign’s coffers. 

And, damnit, she’s a woman and a mother, a woman of color, a woman of achievement. 

An opinion piece in the Times yesterday aligned with Jim Clyburn in calling for a mini-primary in the five weeks between now and the convention… with candidates all over the country throwing their hats in the rings, doing interviews, town halls, and such. I’ve got a lot of questions about that: how much visibility can they reasonably get? How do they “campaign” without a pretty good sized war chest for media buys?  And i wonder if we had a male vice president if we would be so eager? 

Sure, this sounds like the democratic way to do things. And it would be if this was February or even April. 

The house is on fire and throwing open the convention seems to me like throwing Molotov cocktails into the flames. Most analysts believe the end result would be a disaster, sending a divided party out into the most consequential election in our history. The last example of this was 56 years ago in Chicago. Those of us old enough to remember, remember what an ‘excrement’ show that was. And Nixon beat Humphrey by 110 electoral votes.

But if it does, whoever emerges the victor must be the candidate for all of us. 

The house is on fire and we must all agree on one thing. We cannot let a crazy arsonist burn it down because we didn’t get something we wanted. It’s all hands on the line, side by side, grabbing a hose. 

Last week, the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Begun under JFK, and signed by Lyndon Johnson, the bill prohibited any discrimination and segregation based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin. The last few years have seen efforts to roll back the achievements made possible by that law. Reversing affirmative action in colleges and universities and similarly DEI in corporate America, censorship in the classroom, and book banning all have their roots in taking us backwards – to the 1950s and beyond, before civil rights. 

If the worst happens – which I don’t believe it will – and Trump wins, we had best be sending every Democrat running for federal office to Washington. Kathryn Harvey in CD-4 and Bryon Best in CD-3. We must control the House and Senate to keep Trump from getting any of his authoritarian, anti-Democratic, anti-gay, racist, sexist impulses through the Congress and passed into law. What he can do on his signature alone is catastrophic (think Project 2025); we can’t give him the shade of US law as well.

And just as a thought for whoever carries the Democratic standard, I believe it can bring a lot of Democrats into the fold if they would hold a press conference and announce this: “When I am elected, if you give me the Senate that we must have, on Jan. 21, I will submit the names of 5 jurists to the Senate for confirmation to the Supreme Court. And we will rebalance the court and restore a functioning Constitution.”

The house is on fire, but it is still salvageable if we all stand the line.