No. of Recommendations: 5
Albaby, how soon you forgot. You think Harris and Biden earned it or Jim Clyburn hand picked the ticket ?
Both.
Politics is a team sport. It's about allies and alliances. It's about building support and reciprocating it. Biden had the good sense to cut that deal with Clyburn; and Clyburn had the political sense to realize that Biden, rather than the other players in the race, was his best choice for the nomination. And Biden yielded the rewards of years and years of actions that built credibility with Clyburn and Clyburn's constituency - there's little chance that Buttigieg or Sanders could have ever been acceptable choices to Clyburn, given the former's newness and the latter's disdain for coalition politics.
Politics is also process. There isn't one person that's in charge of the party. Clyburn was able to exercise the influence that he did because of the shape of the primary calendar. He had the ability to "hand pick" the ticket because the vagaries of both the candidates and the primary calendar led to an enormously consequential South Carolina primary - Biden was behind and needed to make a deal, Sanders wasn't so far out in front that Biden couldn't be elevated, and both Buttigieg and Klobuchar were hobbled enough that they could be pushed out. In other circumstances, Clyburn isn't a kingmaker - he's hardly the most powerful politician in the House Democratic Caucus, let alone in the party altogether. But in that one moment, he had the chance to force the field. But that's a function of the process: if Biden gets hit by a bus on the way to the August DNC convention this year, and you have a thousand Democratic politicians sitting around needing to pick a candidate, Jim Clyburn isn't going to get to make the choice. Heck, if Biden were to drop out tomorrow, Clyburn wouldn't necessarily have that power even this year - there's going to be too many candidates for the field to winnow at South Carolina, rather than a later state.
