Cottle: So you’re worried that Vladimir Putin watches the debate and is like, “Oh, yeah, I can just steamroll him.”
Douthat: I mean, aren’t you worried about that?
Klein: International politics is in a fistfight. Like, I really think this is sort of getting a little bit too into the pomp of a debate. They’re not like, the way you do international politics is not Putin and, and Joe Biden go in a back room and, you know, like have a, like a bare-chested wrestling match as much as Putin might, might enjoy politics working out that way.
Douthat: It’s not that, but it’s not not that completely.
Klein: I think it is not, not that, but I, or whichever number of negatives I need but I look, if you’re asking me who on the debate I would choose to be president, you’re asking me, as Joe Biden says, to not compare him to the almighty, but to the alternative. My view is that Democrats should not make this that easy.
I don’t think Joe Biden should be running. I’m very clear on that. The place where Democrats are paralyzed in my view is strategically. And I got a lot of feedback on this, much of it very angry. I talked to people who are involved in conventions. I talked to the kinds of people who are delegates at conventions or who would be influential to delegates at conventions.
They don’t believe the party has the muscle for this. They’re not sure who the delegates are. It’s not like it was in the ‘60s where parties knew how to do this and had like a lot of, um, muscle memory on it. And so I think if people are going to wake up in the Democratic Party and think, “Oh, no, we have to do something,” the problem they’re facing really is: What do they do? And so I’ll ask it of you two. Do the two of you actually think if you’re the Democratic Party, you go to a convention and you just sort of open this up on the floor and try your best, or do you try to coronate Kamala Harris? Like, what are you actually saying should happen?
