It’s the bad advice from your mortal enemies that you just didn’t take
By 
No.
The New York Times, natch, has a couple of columnists riding the “WE DEMANDED DEMS IN DISARRAY!” train, although at least in the context of a colloquy of people who actually understand the Democratic Party and want it to win telling them they’re full of shit:
Patrick Healy: Michelle, Lydia, Ross and David, I’ll cut to the chase: Is the Democratic Party making a mistake by quickly going all in on Kamala Harris as its likely presidential nominee?
Michelle Goldberg: This is a hard question, because for the party to do otherwise would mean trying to restrain the passions, enthusiasms and calculations of its members. The instant flood of endorsements for Harris demonstrated that there is both a great deal of support for her among Democrats and, maybe more important, an enormous hunger to finally come together and go after Donald Trump.
Healy: Did that flood of support seem organic to you, Michelle, or orchestrated by Harris’s campaign?
Goldberg: It felt organic, for sure. No doubt Harris and her allies had a strong whip operation — which speaks well of their abilities — but there was also a spontaneous bandwagon effect that no decision maker could have held back. And the fact that Harris was the object of that outpouring of exhilaration and relief suggests no other candidate could compete or unify all the party’s factions as quickly.
“Did that flood of support seem organic to you?” is an amazing question. The de facto Harris campaign raised $70 million in less than 12 hours before the campaign had even begun in any meaningful sense! The euphoric reaction on social media is not something that can be “orchestrated.” There are pundits who just hate Harris and so can’t believe that anyone else is excited about her.
Ross Douthat: It’s a mistake to go all in on Harris, obviously, because she’s still the exceptionally weak candidate whose weaknesses made President Biden so loath to quit the field for her. Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are throwing away an unusual opportunity because they imagine some future opening for themselves — in 2028 and beyond — that may never materialize. And the party clearly has an interest in having a better-situated nominee: A swing-state governor who isn’t tied directly to an unpopular administration would be a much, much better choice for a high-stakes but still winnable race than a liberal Californian machine politician with zero track record of winning over moderate to conservative voters.
Healy: A few governors come to mind here. Go on.
Douthat: Right now it feels as though the party put so much effort into convincing Biden that Harris could be a strong replacement nominee that now it’s going to be stuck with the fruit of that argument: Harris for president.
Lydia Polgreen: I think Democrats falling in line behind Harris isn’t just closing ranks; it is genuine relief and enthusiasm. For weeks now, we have had a kind of mini-tryout for the top of the ticket, with Harris getting the best opportunity to show what she’s made of. There were recent chances for Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania to have a star turn — his response to the Trump assassination attempt — and for Whitmer as well — her book promotion tour. I think Harris has threaded the needle very well.
David French: It’s way too early to say if it’s a mistake. On the one hand, Democrats are not wrong to remember her disastrous 2019 primary campaign. On the other hand, there would be a real cost to a mini-primary, and any candidate not named Kamala Harris would have to be introduced to the American people in less than 100 days.
Ah yes, Ross “Is Ron DeSantis the Republican frontrunner?” Douthat is back to make extremely confident pronouncements that a popular midwestern governor must ipso facto be a great presidential candidate. Just ask President Scott Walker!
To elaborate on French’s pushback, amongst the very obvious problems for Douthat’s position are that 1)there was a 0% chance that the actual Democratic leadership was going to want a chaotic process that would tear the party apart and waste critical weeks, irrespective of what thigh-rubbing pundits and a few donors who vastly overestimate their own importance wanted, 2)there was a 0% chance Biden was going to step down without endorsing Harris, and 3)there was a 0% chance that a governor with no name recognition was going to assemble a majority coalition of delegates against a sitting vice president between July 22 and August 9. The whole proposition is absurd, and very obviously so. Shapiro, Whitmer et al. didn’t run because they’re not idiots who want to lead a charge up Hamburger Hill on behalf of pundits who will find a reason to hate anyone the Democrats nominate, even though it’s not in either their interest or the interest of the party.
Is Harris the best candidate the Democrats could run? I have no idea, and neither does Ross Douthat, and never will anyone else ever know. I do know that we would have learned nothing meaningful about alternative candidates from a couple weeks of panels with Ben Sasse and Dakota Johnson. And more importantly, I know that in terms of both democratic legitimacy and the practical necessity of running a political campaign Harris was always the only viable choice to replace Biden, and the vast majority of actual Democrats agree. Harris has done a remarkable job of uniting and enlivening the party’s base, and while that’s not all that needs to happen to beat Trump it’s a critical foundation. Every pundit furious about Democratic unity makes me happy, and if it compels some people to throw more money to the Harris campaign even better.
…judge for yourself:
FULL SPEECH: Kamala Harris electrifies the crowd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as she delivers her first official campaign speech for the presidency.
Worth watching in its entirety and sharing far and wide. pic.twitter.com/GMSXHSiqHS— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 23, 2024