“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” — Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Say what you will about Kamala Harris's campaign team — Lord knows, I wrote many, many words about them last year, often through tears of laughter — but her political team was ready for war.
The war to replace Joe Biden, that is. As it turns out, according to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," due out April Fool's Day (on the nose, as you'll see), Team Harris had wargamed all the scenarios.
Long before Biden's slack-mouthed June debate performance against Donald Trump, Team Harris "strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office."
According to excerpts seen by The Guardian, the planning team was led by Jamal Simmons, Harris’s White House communications director, who even put together a “death-pool roster” of federal judges for quickly swearing Harris in, in case Biden suddenly checked out.
Simmons “never told the vice president about the death-pool roster before leaving… but he advised colleagues that he should be notified immediately if something happened to Biden."
The details of Biden's decline revealed in "FIGHT" include White House aides leaving "colorful bread crumbs [that] showed the leader of the free world where to walk." Team Harris saw that Biden might not remember where the East Room was and had to follow fluorescent tape on the floor leading him there. “He knows to look for that,” an aide told Allen and Parnes.
All this was going on at least as early as 2022. Simmons left in January 2023 and gave his successor a spreadsheet of his plans. Meanwhile, the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) insisted that Biden was so mentally and physically fit that he "runs circles around all of his staff every day."
The Guardian called this "startling," but c'mon. You and I could see from far away just how far Biden had declined. Team Harris had the close-up view. They'd have been fools (seriously, more on that in a moment) not to wargame every possible scenario. Team Harris had a plan if Biden died in office. They had a plan if he stepped aside before the primaries. They had a plan if he did so after the primaries.
One way or another, if something happened to Biden, Harris was going to be his replacement.
It wasn't just Team Harris preparing for an ungraceful Biden exit. “A handful of Democratic National Committee officials already had considered contingency plans,” Allen and Parnes revealed. “In hush-hush talks starting in 2023, these officials gamed out Biden-withdrawal scenarios," according to the usual anonymous insiders.
Wargaming is a useful tool for almost any endeavor. Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ know and love the Wargaming the Electoral College columns I've written for every election going back to 2004 — and something I've done for kicks since 1988. Wargaming isn't meant to be predictive; it's meant to prepare yourself or your team for various contingencies. The more contingencies you can imagine and prepare for, the more likely you'll succeed.
That's where Team Harris was foolish. (I told you I'd circle back to that.)
As Stephen Kruiser and I discussed for over three years on "Five O'Clock Somewhere," all the speculation about getting rid of Harris was sheer fantasy. As she was the first Woman of Color to serve as veep, the only way to get her to step down (or aside in case of Biden's incapacity) was to convince Harris herself to do it.
Democrats had planned for every contingency — death, decline, or primaries— but failed to account for the one they got stuck with: an unelectable candidate whose ego wrote one check after another that her appeal couldn't cash.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson
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