As I wrote in this column two weeks ago, Joe Biden’s candidacy for president was not sustainable and the Democrats would dump him, probably some time before their August convention. Biden may not have officially thrown in the towel yet, but it is over. He is toast. His pathetic debate performance sealed the deal. Karine Jean-Pierre wasn’t able to call a 90minute live debate “fake” the way she referred to Biden’s stumbling around at a fundraiser only five days prior or his wandering off into the Italian horizon at the G7 a week prior.
So what are the Democrats going to do? The reality is their chances of beating Trump actually got better now that Biden disqualified himself. Before I go into the alternatives, it has to be noted how OK every American Democrat is with having their bosses choose their candidate for them. For people who keep screaming about threats to democracy, they don’t care about democracy at all.
This party of 100 million sycophants does what it is told.
KAMALA. She’s the biggest problem. She’s the heir apparent except she can’t be the heir apparent. The vice president has babbled as incoherently as Biden without the excuse of senility. Nobody, not even her own party, likes her. And everybody knows Trump would clobber her. The problem is that she has to be convinced to accept being passed over and as a woman of color, she has leverage with Democrats who are trapped in their identity politics. I suspect a lot of money — I mean a lot (think the Clinton Foundation) — will do the trick.
GAVIN NEWSOM. For two years I thought the California governor was the guy. He certainly can speak and has a weird charisma about him (how else did he get his first wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, now Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée, to marry him?) But California is such a disaster that running against Newsom simply means Trump has to run against California. The rampant homelessness, crime, insane anti-business policies, and everything else make Newsom essentially a proxy for his state. He’s an unlikely choice.
GRETCHEN WHITMER. The governor of Michigan gets mentioned a lot. Her weaknesses include her essentially pro-Palestinian stance, her draconian approach to COVID (she makes Fauci look like a moderate) and her plane trip to Florida at a time she had her state on a travel ban. But the Democrats have to win Michigan and she’d give them a chance. I could see this happening.
MICHELLE OBAMA. The Democrats keep dreaming she’ll run but she keeps saying she doesn’t want to. I believe her. Michelle has never shown any interest in policy details and has never dealt with global issues. With all of her pride, she’d hate being asked questions about issues she doesn’t understand. I think she’d rather keep building her money stash.
J.B. PRITZKER. The governor of Illinois is superrich and could put a fortune into the campaign. But Illinois is a mini-California what with all of Chicago’s crime problems and then there’s Pritzker’s size. This country hasn’t elected a fat president since William Howard Taft.
JOSH SHAPIRO. Who? You’d better remember the name. He’s the governor of Pennsylvania and has shown an ability to win by large margins in a swing state. And he’s not a radical, which would give him the ability to steal back the swing voters that have moved to Trump. Shapiro has bucked the environmentalists by supporting shale gas drilling in his state and is staunchly pro-Israel, which is the winning political side of that issue. He could beat Trump and the Democrats, who are very shrewd about these things, probably understand that.
ALL THE LEFTIES. Elizabeth Warren, et al. Count them all out. Even the Democrats have moved on from these nuts. The defeat of congressman Jamal Bowman in his House district in New York in a Democrat primary and the puny attendance at a rally headlined by Bernie Sanders and AOC are signs The Squad is, for the time being, out of favor. You’re not going to beat Trump with more radicalism.
CHUCK SCHUMER. I’m the only person touting his chances and I hope I’m wrong because he could beat Trump. As a garden-variety, but smart, Democrat Schumer almost is a generic candidate. This would allow the Democrats to turn the election into a referendum on Trump. Trump would try to continue to make it a referendum on the last four nightmarish years as Schumer has backed every one of Biden’s policies. But Chuck won’t babble like Biden during a debate and is pretty good at wielding the political hatchet.
ANDY BESHEAR. He’s twice been elected governor of Kentucky, a very Republican state. That counts for something.
SOMEBODY ELSE. It might have to be somebody else. The Democrats have never developed well-liked national figures since Obama, which is why they turned to Biden in 2020 in the first place. The hijacking of the party by radicals has made most of its well-known figures toxic to voters. But they have to find somebody and every alternative above is flawed.
HILLARY. In her (and only her) dreams.
Mark Belling is the host of a daily WISN radio talk show.
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