My colleague The Moose, fresh from a forced-march family vacation in the Lone Star State, has drawn attention to the profile of Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman by Dan Halpern in the current issue of The New Yorker. This is indeed a great read, which shows exactly how far the Kinkster is pushing the anti-political, political envelope beyond the far horizons established by Jesse Ventura back in 1998 (compared to Kinky, The Body was a fairly conventional candidate, as the former Ventura advisors now staffing Friedman have probably figured out).But the same issue of The New Yorker has another piece that I highly recommend: Peter J. Boyer’s article on Billy and Franklin Graham. (The article’s not available online, though the New Yorker site does offer an audio slide show about it).Boyer interprets Billy Graham’s rise as representing the emergence of Protestant Evangelical Christianity through the deliberate blurring of fundamentalism’s “rough edges,” most epecially doctrinal rigidity and hostily towards less-rigorous Christians. And he interprets Franklin Graham’s long and winding road towards a prominence rivalling his father’s as illustrating a more recent resurgence of fundamentalist theology bent on direct engagement with secular culture, and a recommitment to conservative and partisan politics.I found Boyer’s reporting on Billy Graham’s early career, and the hostility he generated among evangelical fundamentalists, fascinating and instructive. As it happens, I grew up in a conservative southern evangelical milieu, and had no idea Graham was considered a dangerous liberal by the fundies. Indeed, my wife and I have virtually identical anecdotes from our childhood about our deeply conservative Baptist grandmothers striding to the family television set (a major war-zone in those pre-cable days), changing the channel from a movie our fathers wanted to watch, and announcing: “It’s time for Billy Graham.” No one dared to switch the channel back.In the decades since those innocent days, the fundamentalists have indeed not only reconquered southern evangelical Protestantism, but appear to currently occupy the commanding heights of evangelical Protestantism around the country. Billy’s son, Franklin, is part of the backlash. And moreover, another famous son of a famous father, George W. Bush, is a key transition figure in the rightward turn of evangelical Protestantism.You probably know the story: Back during his impressionable thirties, W. left behind a casual affiliation with the Anglicanism of his forefathers, and perhaps a more intense attachment to the congregation of Jack Daniels, after a discussion with Billy Graham. And years later, of course, the younger Bush developed a close political alliance with the new fundamentalist-dominated Christian Right, including the younger Graham. Indeed, Franklin Graham probably achieved his greatest notoriety when protests broke out against his plans to become an administration-authorized dispenser of aid to war-ravaged Iraq despite a history of inflammatory statements about Islam as “evil.”In any event, the whole tale is fascinating, and worth the price of buying the print version of The New Yorker. You can read about Kinky for dessert.
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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.