From the arena floor to the lobbyist-funded open bars, Republicans in Milwaukee for their convention this week have been talking mostly about one thing. It’s not Donald Trump, even after the assassination attempt on the eve of the event. Instead, they are asking what’s happening with his opponent.
The speculation about whether President Joe Biden will stay in the race has accelerated as the Democratic effort to push him out has too. After the announcement of J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate eradicated the last bit of drama in what has been a smoothly run and elaborately choreographed convention, the greatest political suspense is a thousand miles away in a Delaware beach house where Biden has isolated after testing positive for COVID. “The gossip is who is going to replace him,” said Travis Korson, a longtime Republican consultant.
Representative Keith Self of Texas said the Democrats reminded him of Joe Btfsplk, a cartoon character from “Li’l Abner” who perpetually has a dark cloud hanging over his head. Self thinks Democrats have “a pretty tough road to hoe,” provided, of course, the road doesn’t lead off a cliff.
The Trump campaign, for its part, is happy to run against a weakened Biden: Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser, called the effort to replace Biden an “attempted coup” in an interview on Thursday morning. While the Schadenfreude was rampant, the parlor game was focused on who would replace him. Insiders who knew every minute detail of internal Republican politics were left trying to puzzle out exactly how the Democratic Party works behind the scenes.
“They elevated Joe Biden, for crying out loud, for the presidency, and they hid him in a basement for the last election, and what worked once will never work again. And now, everybody gets to see in full view what they’ve elected,” said Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. “And granted, he’s certainly declined since his first day in the White House, but he’s not a lot different than he was his first day.”
Cramer, who served as a state party chair before being elected to Congress, said Democrats “have to determine what’s the least-bad option in front of them.” He added, “I have been saying up until probably a week ago that their least-bad option is to try to lift Joe Biden up and try to pitch and sell him. Yeah, I mean, he’s won an election for president before. But he’s certainly diminished, to say the least … Now I don’t think they have any option other than to try to make Kamala Harris better than she is.”
In Cramer’s view, the incumbent vice-president is not a formidable political adversary because “she’s got the same number of votes on presidential primaries as I have: none.”
There was also a more conspiratorial point of view about what is happening to the Democrats. Jason Walton, a former Senate candidate from Utah, said his “opinion has always been — I have no reason for thinking this — but I’ve thought for months that they never intended to have Joe Biden be their candidate.” To him, “this looks like a coordinated PR campaign with steps in it,” he said, adding, “I don’t know that.”
Republicans were mostly sanguine about any replacements. They played pundit as they downed canned vodka cocktails before the convention and tall glasses of Spotted Cow beer late at night, debating the various merits of opponents ranging from Harris to Gavin Newsom to Josh Shapiro. The one dark horse that perennially came up was Michelle Obama. The former First Lady has long been the focus of right-wing clickbait about how she is secretly being groomed to take over the Democratic Party. On Wednesday night, Donald Trump Jr. asked the arena, “Who is really running the country?” Delegates across the floor spontaneously shouted “Obama!”
“I don’t think I’d be revealing any sort of polling secrets if I said Michelle Obama would probably be the one person that could step in and keep the party united and probably provide a little bit of a moving start because of her obvious notoriety,” said Cramer.
