My friend Alex Wise is the host of Sea Change Radio. He usually focuses on environmental issues, but he occasionally has me on to talk about politics. I was on his show last week, just a few days before the president stunned the country by dropping out of the running.

You can listen to that discussion here. Here’s how Alex summed it up:

No matter what your current stance may be on the upcoming presidential election, the past few weeks of debate debacles and failed assassination attempts have definitely demonstrated that unforeseen events can happen. We still have several months between now and November, during which time the plot may continue to twist and turn. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with John Stoehr of the Editorial Board to get his insights into the calls for Democrats to replace President Biden on the ticket. In this free-flowing conversation, we unpack the problem with what Stoehr describes as a “customer service approach” to politics, learn why he believes third parties are a scam, and question polling data that have so many undecided voters in an election between two well-known quantities.

Alex is also a subscriber. After reading Monday’s edition, in which I argued that Joe Biden’s decision was a mistake, though hopefully not a fatal one, he felt strongly enough about it to offer an opposing take. I thought my fellow New Havener (though he lives in San Francisco now) made terrific points worth amplifying, so I asked if I could post them in the interest of balanced views. Alex graciously accepted my invitation.

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Hey John,

I enjoyed our discussion last week and it turned out to be pretty timely, all things considered. I wanted to add a bit of a postscript to our taping session after reading today‘s Editorial Board. I was a bit taken aback by the negative tone of it on the heels of our conversation. You offer a few points that I wanted to address and didn’t think Twitter was the right format for the many thoughts I had about your piece.

While we agree that tossing aside the power of the incumbency is a risky proposition, in many ways, a Harris candidacy retains that same leverage while swapping out messengers. She will certainly be able to more effectively communicate the successes of this administration to the American people than Biden could. And while sexism and racism are obviously factors to consider, I don’t think the comparisons between Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris are apples-to-apples just because they’re both women. Hillary Clinton had been under the spotlight for over two decades and had been vilified into a larger-than-life figure by the right. 

Additionally, you wrote that if Harris loses any one of Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin that she’s finished, but she could easily make up one of those states by winning some combination of the other swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020 — Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. I know those three states have been polling poorly for Biden, but I think this is an entirely new and different race. As we talked about in our Sea Change Radio episode, the recent polling of both Biden v. Trump and Harris v. Trump has been difficult to interpret because of the internal dissent among left-leaning voters about Biden’s viability. Once Harris has established herself as the heir apparent and voters get to view her in this new light, I believe her ceiling is much higher than some naysayers are predicting.

Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but we all want the same thing. It’s just a question of how long it will take us to move on from the thunderbolt of the president not seeking re-election. The temptation to view the future through a fear-based lens is obviously significant, particularly with Trump and autocracy looming over this race. However, I tend to think we all will be happier and our democracy will be healthier if we can collectively embrace the real possibility of Harris outpacing Biden’s 2020 margin of victory.

Up until yesterday, our biggest foe was apathy. That has suddenly evaporated. Since Biden and Trump are very well-known quantities, this election was never going to boil down to convincing swing voters to choose between the Red and Blue teams. Rather, it will be decided by turnout and Harris’s candidacy has obviously energized people and changed the nature of the national conversation in a real and meaningful way. One of the biggest advantages that Biden had was his war chest and ground game — Harris inherits all of that, but now she has excitement on her side as well. She can talk about the future in a way that neither Biden nor Trump could by virtue of her relative youth, which will resonate with the younger generation in a way we haven’t seen since Obama. Interest from this July surprise has just skyrocketed on both sides, which should translate into increased turnout.

Obviously, we all are very afraid of another Trump administration. I personally am choosing to not rain on a parade that has yet to begin its procession.

My two cents,

Alex