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What does President Biden ending his POTUS re-election bid mean for the election? · Kvetch & Release

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  John Lidkey here filling in for Daan McDonald on AM eight hundred CKLW. Can
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  you believe that it's already the twenty second of July. Unbelievable. Also unbelievable
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  what happened yesterday, quite frankly, with President Joe Biden ending his twenty twenty
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  four re election big bid, big news. There's been a lot of big
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  news coming out of the United States. Quite frankly. There was an assassination
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  attempt to former President Donald Trump a week ago. Two weeks before that,
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  three weeks ago, there was the debate performance that led to Joe Biden ending
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  his bid. Yesterday, what a shocker. Nobody really knew that it was
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  about to happen. He just tweeted it out. Joining me to discuss is
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  doctor Stephen J. Farnsworth, Professor and Director of the Center for Leadership and
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  Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington. How are you doing today,
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  doctor, I'm fine. How are you doing very well? Thank you so
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  much for joining me here. Big news, of course, with the president
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  ending his reelection bid, what is this? Well, it means that there's
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  going to be a major reset. This is an unprecedented development in American politics,
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  never has a presidential candidate abandoned a campaign this close to the election.
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  It's in November, and so in the next one hundred and so days we
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  are going to see a totally different campaign. All indications are that the vice
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  president is going to be the next nominee, and that will present a new
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  opportunity for Democrats who were really pretty bleak in their prospects with Joe Biden remaining
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  at the helm. There was a lot of discontent about having two elderly white
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  men running against each other. This will of course shake things up, but
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  we have seen the Republicans at least making noise, I don't know about making
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  news yet that they're not happy about this, even though they have said they
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  think it'll be easier. We have seen some elected Republicans saying this can't be
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  done. It's against the law. We're going to challenge this everywhere across the
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  country. What do you take of that, Well, those are not serious
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  legal challenges. The reality is that the Democratic Party has not had its national
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  convention yet, it hasn't selected a nominee. Joe Biden. Had the pledged
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  delegates at the convention unfolded, he would have been the nominee. But the
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  reality is that no state ballot is closed yet, they won't be until after
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  the Democrats have made their selection, so not really an issue. It's just
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  a lot of noise that's being made. Well. Ultimately, the Republicans are
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  trying to figure out a way to spin this in a way that works for
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  them. For the last month, it has been Joe Biden is too old
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  to be president, and now with Kala Harris is the parent front runner for
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  the nomination, then she can't. She's not the legitimate choice. So there
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  will always be a legal challenge in America. Lawyers are a real growth industry
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  in the United States, ever more so when we're thinking about lawyers in policy.
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  But the reality is that this is not a serious legal challenge. It's
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  not going to go anywhere. Do you think that Vice President Kamala Harris is
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  going to be the likely nominee for the Democrats? I do all of the
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  names that you would associate as potential rivals, the people who were mentioned for
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  twenty twenty eight, assuming that Biden been the nominee. In twenty twenty four,
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  Governor Knewsom, California, Governor Pritzker of Illinois Governor Whitmer of Michigan,
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  and a series of senators. They've all endorsed Vice President Harris as the successor.
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  So it does look like there won't be any top tier candidate at least
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  running against her for that Democratic nomination, and that's the optimal situation for the
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  Democrats. I think Republicans would have been very, very happy if the Democrats
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  if they had chosen to go down the road of a kind of a mini
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  primary with five or six candidates competing for that nomination in the next few weeks
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  before the convention. You know, the narrative has true gone from Democrats in
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  disarray to Democrats lining up behind what looks to be the presumptive nominee, Vice
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  President Kamala Harris. The choice of her running mate is of course going to
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  be a very important one. I wonder what your thoughts are when it comes
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  to balancing out the ticket. Do you think that there needs to be another
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  man on the ticket to help to have gender parody, unlike on their Republican
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  ticket where it is just two men. Do you think that there's the potential
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  that having another woman on the ticket could help bolster what's your take on this
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  well. I think that there are a lot of pluses and minuses that one
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  could imagine for different candidates. Elections tend to be won and lost in the
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  American Midwest when you think about the electoral College, and so perhaps Governor Shapiro
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  Pennsylvania would be an appealing choice Pennsylvania if it were off the table because of
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  the running candidate. A running mate from Pennsylvania that could be really useful.
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  Senator Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut, he might also be a compelling
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  choice. Arizona was one of the closest states in the twenty twenty election,
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  and so taking that state off the table for the Democrats could create an environment
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  that would be appealing for them. I think what's not going to happen is
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  somebody that doesn't represent a swing state. As close as this election is,
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  you simply cannot imagine that this running made opportunity would go to somebody who's not
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  from a state that is going to be really intensely contested. And there are
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  only about a half dozen of them. So big scratch and Whitmer from Michigan
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  could be a potential contender. Yeah, I probably should have mentioned her too.
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  Michigan is another one of those states that is a key part of the
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  electoral college map for both parties, and Governor Whitmer, who has demonstrated a
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  compelling ability to run ahead of other Democrats, including Joe Biden in her own
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  political career, offers up a narrative that could be compelling to My guess is
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  that it might be more Pennsylvania than Michigan, but that would certainly be part
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  of the mix as well. Hey, well, Midwest, I mean we
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  know that that's where a lot of those really important votes are sort of undecided.
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  You've got independence as well. I want to circle back, though,
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  we were talking about how it appears as if it's going to be a coronation
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  to a certain extent for VP Harris, although albeit anything could happen. I
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  suppose do you think that there's any of a risk though to the Democrats to
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  have it appear that way rather than having it as a competition. Does that
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  not open up the line of attack from Trump and from Vance that this is
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  just a hand picked elite candidate and it doesn't represent the grassroots or is that
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  something that can just be swatted away? Well, the Democrats didn't have a
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  lot of good scenarios here, right. One option was to stick with Biden,
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  that didn't look like a winner when you look at the polls. Another
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  option is to have a competition, which would create a lot of resentment from
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  the people who when that may undermine the Democrats' chances in November. The third
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  option, the one that seems most likely right now the Vice President Harris is
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  more or less selected, is another less than optimal choice, But there were
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  no optimal choices in this situation. I do think though, that the Democrats
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  would answer that by noting that the reality is that she was an elected vice
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  president, she has won a national election, and that is proof enough of
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  her support in the country. People will be persuaded or not, probably depending
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  on whether they are Democrats or Republicans. To start with, because in our
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  political system in the United States now, political loyalties are so fixed that your
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  side is always right and the other side is always wrong. So the conversation
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  following the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump is that there was a change
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  of tone, a change of character. He was a new man. I
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  don't subscribe to most of that chatter because we saw with then, you know,
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  real quick frankly ten minutes of the debate beginning that he reverted back to
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  or seeing that the convention his speech reverting back to his old ways. I
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  wonder what you think a matchup between President Trump and Vice President Harris might look
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  like. Do you think that there would even be a debate. I've seen
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  him seemingly try to get out of a debate recently. Well, I think
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  it's important to note that the stage has already been set for Trump to say,
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  Look, I was willing to debate Biden. I'm not willing to debate
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  her. The reality is that she's an articulate former prosecutor who is you know
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  if you look back and says her as her career as an attorney general or
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  as an investigator in the US Senate before she became vice president, she demonstrated
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  a great ability to get under the skin of Republicans. And so I have
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  little doubt that Donald Trump would have referred to debate Joe Biden again. But
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  that's not in the cards, and so with that change, maybe Trump says
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  no. I think it's important to note that Trump committed to three debates in
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  twenty twenty and only did two of them. Yeah, it'd be interesting to
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  see how how that all unfolds. You know, it's a really unprecedented time.
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  Donald Trump is certainly bombastic. I just I don't know how any of
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  this is going to play out. And as we increasingly we see it through
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  social media, traditional media still has a very important role to play. How
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  do you think that traditional media is handling this election? As the director of
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  the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington, I
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  love your perspective on how the media is doing. Yeah. Well, I've
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  written several books about media coverage of elections, and my view is that a
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  bad situation continues to get worse. So I think that the media is very
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  much focused on trivial matters. It doesn't give people the most useful information for
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  them about what they need to know about what the country would be like if
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  this candidate wins or that candidate wins, or rather it's all about strategy,
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  horse race, who's ahead of the polse who's behind in the polls. This
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  is a major major problem in terms of what most people are going to see
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  in terms of their news. And as bad as that environment is, it
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  is so much worse on social media, where people anonymously can post stuff that
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  is false, made up pictures, made up statements of AI has created an
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  even worse environment for this, and so you end up with a situation where
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  a democracy that depends on effective, accurate discourse and the countering of false discourse
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  is really struggling to deal with the avalanche of fraudulent claims being made in the
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  media environment. And when traditional media report what's being said in social media,
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  then those false claims get amplified even further. A good example of this would
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  be to consider the disparity between the coverage of Trump's health questions and Biden's health
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  questions. Remember, these men are only about three years apart in age,
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  and the conversation about Donald Trump's fitness to serve was really pretty limited with respect
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  to this health question. Even in the wake of the assassination attempt, there
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  really wasn't all that much medical information being provided in the immediate aftermath of that
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  incident. So there really has been a double standard, I think, in
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  this question of how the two men were treated with help. But that's part
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  of a larger narrative where the accurate information that voters need is hard to find.
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  If you see it produced at all by the media. I suppose it's
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  the issue of having one candidate being a celebrity and another candidate being more of
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  a traditional politician. The media, it seems us having a hard time differentiating
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  in how to treat both. Albeit I would say you should probably just treat
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  them both the same, like they're running for office. Well that's true,
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  but it is the case that Joe Biden was never as good as showman as
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  Donald Trump was. I mean, Donald Trump comes out of television. He
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  had a successful show, The Apprentice. He was a very much a figure
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  of media attention and focus in New York going back into the seventies, and
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  so you have somebody who really understands how to shape the narrative in a way
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  that can connect with the public. In Donald Trump. That's his real skill
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  as a politician. He's a very very effective campaigner. The skill that Joe
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  Biden has is more about the legislative skill getting some of those bills passed that
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  he got passed with respect to infrastructure and the environment and improving healthcare. Those
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  kinds of things don't necessarily get you the headlines, and they're not the sort
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  of things that voters necessarily remember, and that was part of his challenge.
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  I think as a politician he was much more of a workhorse than a show
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  horse. But the modern media environment rewards the show horse. You still got
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  to show off. Well. I want to thank you so much, doctor
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  Stephen J. Farnsworth, Professor and Director of the Center for Leadership and Media
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  Studies at the University of Mary Washington as well as a political writer. Thank
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  you so much for your time. Doctor. Thank you have a good one
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  as well.