Questions about President Joe Biden’s age, mental fitness, and familial corruption have Democrats possibly looking for a potential replacement in the event he emulates Lyndon Johnson and withdraws from seeing a second term.
Could Democrats Dump Joe Biden?
Former CNN host Brian Stelter writes in Vanity Fair that the Democrats have a deep bench for 2024 and 2028.
A new poll found that a stunning 77% of voters think he is too old for another term, including 69% of Democrats.
“There’s no development in the president’s health that’s making [Biden’s people] more worried than not,” Stelter quoted Vanity Fair contributing editor Chris Smith as saying. “But they’re realists and, you know, they know the actuarial facts as well as the rest of us. So they are very much keeping their fingers crossed and wondering how this is going to play out.”
Stelter considers Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Vice President Kamala Harris as possible replacements for Biden at the top of the ticket.
J.B. Pritzker
Pritzker, a multi-billionaire, easily won re-election last November. He touted the legalization of marijuana, raising the minimum wage, improvements in the state’s terrible financial rating, and the enshrining of a right to an abortion as his key accomplishments during his first term.
He used his billions to interfere with the Republican gubernatorial candidate to get a more conservative candidate from downstate Illinois nominated to face him.
“I have had to manage through a lot of crises over the course of my life, and I’m not suggesting they’re all like a global pandemic,” Pritzker told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview a little over a week ago.
“I’m just saying that in a difficult circumstance, when tensions are high, and it’s an emergency, that reacting quickly, being decisive, listening to experts, those are all things that I had learned through the course of my personal life and my business life.”
Gavin Newsom
Newsom likewise won a second term as governor of California after surviving a recall attempt in 2021 by Republicans and others who were upset with his handling of COVID. He has become the Democrats’ point man on LGBT issues and has taken his message to historically Republican audiences in places like Montana and to Sean Hannity’s program.
He has taken significant flak for his handling of the state’s homelessness crisis, for his failed green-energy programs, and the state’s budgetary crisis.
“This is on its way to becoming the fourth-largest economy in the world. What are you arguing for? Mississippi’s economic policy?” Newsom asked in response to Sean Hannity’s claim that Democrat economic policies were harming the nation in June. “Literally, that’s what you’re arguing for. The great Sam Brownback’s Kansas policy? It was a debacle, no economic growth. Seventy-one percent of the GDP in America are [in] blue counties, progressive policies. Seventy-one percent of the country’s wealth.
Seven of the top 10 dependent states are your states. We’re subsidizing your states, Sean, because of your policies.”
Gretchen Whitmer
Whitmer similarly was re-elected last fall and has succeeded in flipping all three branches of Michigan’s state government to Democratic control.
She enshrined some top Progressive political agenda items such as the right to abortion into the state’s constitution, Red Flag laws for gun owners that Michigan sheriffs say violates that Second Amendment, and discarded conscience protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The case for Whitmer relies on her image as a relatable, business-friendly yet socially progressive executive who is effectively defending the heart of the Rust Belt from the dangers of Trumpist populism. A review of [Benjamin] Wallace-Wells’s piece, however, shows a governor whose program has been unsuccessfully tried before and whose state is just as purple as ever,” National Review columnist Alexander Hughes wrote. “Whitmer hopes her economic agenda will attract new residents to the state and shore up the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects.”
Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris would be a shoo-in for the Democratic Party nomination if it were not for her personal unlikability and constant gaffes that cause people to compare her with former Vice President Dan Quayle.
Harris has become doctrinaire about enshrining the right to an abortion in federal law, has gone on the offensive against Florida’s black-history curriculum, and has been front-and-center on the Biden administration’s effort to ban semi-automatic rifles.
Her campaign for president imploded in 2019 because she was unable to find message discipline and because she was an ineffective leader.
Should Joe Biden drop out of the race, it will make it harder for Donald Trump to win because they will be able to run against the former president’s unpopularity. Joe Biden’s unpopularity and corruption all but nullify the advantage that the Democrats should have against a former president who faces multiple indictments.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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