With Donald Trump formally accepting the Republican nomination and J.D. Vance confirmed as the pick for vice president, the GOP table is set for a November showdown, but their campaign faces an unprecedented problem: They don’t know who they’re running against.
Trump senior adviser Brian Hughes cut to the heart of it Wednesday in a statement declining one plan for a vice presidential debate: “We don’t know who the Democrat nominee for Vice President is going to be, so we can’t lock in a date before their convention.”
Twisting the dagger, he added: “To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate.”
Indeed: The Democrats are flailing in internal fighting over whether and how to drop President Biden, leaving the whole ticket entirely uncertain.
Well-sourced reports have ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi working hard behind the scenes to try to shake Biden out, with top Senate and House Dems Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries joining in; even former President Barack Obama has jumped on the “drop out, Joe” bandwagon (albeit, by once again “leading from behind”).
Many donors are on strike until Biden quits the race.
Amid rumors that he might drop as soon as this weekend, some fear he’ll keep on refusing.
That could force top Democrats to the extreme measure of invoking the 25th Amendment to put Veep Kamala Harris in charge, which would also free up convention delegates otherwise sworn to him.
At this point, Harris seems the near-certain replacement atop the ticket; among other things, other possibles won’t want to damage their own futures by serving the party as a sacrificial lamb in an election they’d be almost guaranteed to lose.
Replacing Biden also means finding a new veep pick: Harris either moves up or is humiliated by being passed over, and the new ticket needs balancing, anyway.
And, again, it won’t be made official until the convention starts Aug. 19.
Plus, all of this looks pretty undemocratic for a party that’s made “threats to democracy” it’s main campaign them, hence the talk of holding debates before the convention, or at it, to make any behind-closed-doors insiders’ pick look kosher.
The only certainty is at least some chaos is guaranteed, along with aggravating delays.
Trump and Vance know what they’re opposing; four years of Democrats’ disasters handed them the message on a silver platter: We’ll clean up this mess.
But the who isn’t so much “The Apprentice” as it is “The Masked Singer.”