Aside from the Delayniac hijinks mentioned in my last post, there’s a far more serious example of House Republican misbehavior on display in Pennsylvania. Rep. Curt Weldon has launched a series of attacks on Democratic rival Joe Sestak that began with a Swift-Boat-style attack on the service record of the 31-year-Navy-veteran and retired three-star admiral, and quickly strayed over every conceivable line of decency by questioning the Sistak family’s choice of treatment for their daughter’s potentially fatal brain tumor. Jonathan Kaplan of The Hill has the whole outrageous story today, but here’s a precis: Weldon is retailing charges that Sestak, a Clinton administration National Security Council staffer, and more recently director of the Navy’s internal think tank, Deep Blue, made his subordinates and superiors unhappy with his hard-driving style. You can read the back-and-forth on this subject in Kaplan’s article, but it sure looks to me like Sestak was a tree-shaker who discomfited the notoriously change-averse Navy establishment, which is a good thing. But whatever the facts on this case, it’s incredible that Weldon would have the chutzpah to attack Sestak’s service record, while continuing to support the policies of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. After all, the former Texas Air National Guard veteran Bush spent much of the Vietnam War running an Alabama Senate race. And his hireling, the current Secretary of Defense, has caused a lot more unhappiness in the armed forces than any one figure in recent history, while compiling a disastrous record of incompetence. How can Weldon possibly suggest that Sestak’s service actually disqualifies him from serving in Congress? It gets, unfortunately, a lot worse. Weldon also attacked Sestak for merely renting a home back in Pennsylvania, while living in suburban Washington (a criticism which I am sure Weldon would not make of Leesburg, Virginia resident Rick Santorum). When Sestak explained that he lingered in Washington because his daughter was undergoing chemotherapy and various surgeries in a local hospital, Weldon breezily suggested that Sestak should have relocated his daughter to a hospital in Pennsylvania or nearby Delaware. This is beyond disgusting. My first impulse on reading Kaplan’s story was to propose that Weldon be horse-whipped. My second impulse was to demand that every other Republican repudiate Weldon’s tactics. And that’s why it’s especially troubling to me that Sen. John McCain, proud Navy veteran and war hero, and the victim of Weldon-style scurrilous attacks on his family by the Bush campaign of 2000, headlined a fundraiser for the Pennylvania Republican just last Saturday. Fine, support your party’s candidates. Fine, praise Weldon’s legislative record. And fine, maybe you didn’t know what Weldon was saying about his opponent. But please, don’t lend your name to a man willing to smear the record and family of Joe Sestak. There are some things that cannot be justified by partisan politics, and if this doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what ever would.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.