Agree w the former. Well-known well-adored loud-mouthed morons. Rightly or wrongly, the R base seems quite happy with their apparent front runners.
As to the latter:
Agree the Ds would be better served to have a fresh up-and-comer. But somebody (anybody) is not going to go from relative obscurity to plausible front runner against the GOP’s several well-known loudmouths in the couple of years remaining. It’s already too late for that. Whoever this savior is, they should already be well apparent now. The worst possible outcome for the Dems would be a primary season starting with 10 relative unknowns in a dead heat. We can certainly recall R primaries that started that way. Including jokes about “So-and-so and the 7 (or 20) dwarves.”
Harris may or may not be a spent force, but she occupies a blocking position, and ironically the only thing that removes that blockage is her running as Biden’s VP, or her withdrawing altogether. The latter being vanishingly unlikely, the former is the only remaining option that would permit some other non-Biden non-Harris serious front runner(s) to emerge.
It’s very ugly to say this, but until the Rs recover their sanity (which may be decades from now), IMO the Ds need to run white men, and only white men. The Rs of course will rubbish whoever the Ds run. But the Ds handing the Rs a convenient, inescapable, and very resonant additional stick to beat the D candidate with is a very bad idea.
The hard-core white supremacists are already firmly in the R camp. But there are one hell of a lot of “middle Americans” who still are partially susceptible to the racist / sexist argument. Perhaps not to the point of voting R, but every D voter who stays home because “I can’t quite bring myself to vote for a non-white-cishet-male” is a problem for the Ds.
Trump won in 2016 almost entirely due to the number of Ds who rationalized that they personally could get away with not voting for Hillary Clinton, while still preferring that the D candidate win. And not solely because they didn’t like her as a politician. In a lot of cases it was because they didn’t like her entirely due to her sex. IMO the Ds would be far better served in 2024 to avoid that unforced error a second time.
Let me be clear that the immediately above is not how I think about my vote. But it is how I think about a lot of other voters who might plausibly vote D given a candidate suitable to their tastes.
Separately:
The R primary system is designed to very quickly converge on a single front runner for everyone to rally around. The D primary system is designed to delay that decision as late as possible so the later voting states aren’t handed a fait accompli by the earlier ones.*
Given that difference and the relative strength of R candidates with their base, plus their built-in electoral and Electoral College advantages, etc., the Ds really, really need to have their clear front runner emerge early. So they can begin to direct their fire towards the R side, not towards each other. All primaries (of both parties) are to some degree damaging circular firing squads. The sooner that period draws to a close, the less damage done. Which will not happen in a field of a dozen relative unknowns each taking their first real whack at the nomination.
All of which leads me to the conclusion that a Biden/Harris ticket in 2024 is the best path for a D win. At least assuming nothing majorly unexpected happens to them or to any of the R front-runners or to the country between now and primary season.
* Aside: Of course one can see the deep-seated ideological differences between the parties in their respective choice of methodologies. Concentrated power versus diffuse power. One can also see the difference between a tactic geared mostly to winning for winning’s sake, versus one geared mostly to being consistent with one’s ideology.
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