Michelle Obama’s Possible Presidential Run – Michelle Obama is a former first lady and very popular. She would be a dynamite presidential candidate for the Democratic Party going into the 2024 Presidential Election. Rumors have abounded for the last two years that the former first lady was considering a run.
In fact, I and others were convinced that she would have announced as we approach the 2024 Democratic Party Primary.
She would be an unstoppable political force—especially against Donald Trump’s immovable political object.
But Michelle Obama wants everyone to know (including Oprah) that she’ll “never, ever run for president.”
Of course, that’s what they all say.
Until a couple of weeks ago, even President Joe Biden was coy about his reelection run. Now that the forty-sixth president has announced his intentions to run for reelection—with Kamala Harris again as his vice-president—there’s little opportunity for Michelle Obama to run.
Yes, she’s infinitely more popular than any politician presently running or thinking about running for president in 2024. That’s not enough, though. There are inter-party dynamics that Michelle Obama would have to contemplate.
After all, the only people thus far challenging the sclerotic Biden reelection bid are two outliers in the Democratic Party—Marianne Williamson, who believes in the healing power of crystals and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is notoriously anti-vaccine (and, therefore, textbook unelectable in the vaccine-loving Democratic Party).
Michelle Obama, as wife of the last “successful” two term Democratic Party president, Barack Obama, cannot easily mount a challenge to the party’s frontrunner without causing a major rift in the Democratic Party. This, as the DNC must remain united if it is to overcome the GOP in the coming contentious 2024 Presidential Election.
The only way that Michelle Obama would run in 2024 was if the Democratic Party had no one left. That’s not because she is unpopular. She is very popular. But because for her to come wading into the Democratic Party Primary in 2024 while there is a viable (relatively speaking) leading candidate who is already the president, would be more damaging in the near-term to the Democrats.
In the long-run, though, I believe her bid would be far more beneficial.
American politics, sadly, is not about the long-term calculations of anything. It’s all about short-termism and being in the moment. Plus, Obama would have to put in a lot of money for her to be successful running against Biden, who would not go quietly into that good night—even though he’s completely clueless as to where he is most of the time and who is talking to.
There was a window of opportunity for Michelle Obama to have run. That window is now closed. Between her reticence to get back into national politics (this time being a competitor rather than the wife of a competitor) and the hurdle of overcoming a sitting Democratic Party president, it isn’t worth her now getting into the mix.
But Democrats should lament the fact that she didn’t get involved. She’d have easily won for them what will be very tough for Biden to win.
Republicans, on the other hand, should rejoice. Because a Michelle Obama bid would have destroyed whoever ended up being the GOP’s nominee.
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A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
