Re: What If Joe Biden Is Right?

“What if and why? In such a wealthy and relatively well educated population, why aren’t there individuals willing to step up to run?”

Run against a sitting president of your own party? Teddy Roosevelt ran against William Howard Taft, Bobby Kennedy ran against Lyndon Johnson, and Teddy Kennedy ran against Jimmy Carter. Ugly divisive experiences in ugly, divisive times.

Both parties are gerontocracies. In the case of the Democrats, Biden, Schumer, Pelosi (still in Congress despite giving up the Speakership. People hang on because they don’t have any “real” life. Mostly, they’ve never done anything except be politicians. “Spending more time with the family” is something you do only after a scandal breaks. The bipartisan phenomenon of “safe” constituencies lets them pile up seniority and fend off the young people.

Both parties are coalitions filled with tensions. In the case of the Democrats, there are the Progressive and Moderate wings, along with Joe Manchin. Biden has this very unhappy marriage papered-over for now. The representative of one faction primarying the president seems to me like it would draw in a representative of the other faction. So, a two or three-way fight for the nomination with each candidate offering distinctly different agendas. (JMO and I come in peace, but all you have to do is put Jayapal’s sneering face on television to send most voters streaming for the Republicans.)

Could the party have time to patch up the wounds from such a fight in time for a general election? Maybe, IF the whole process had started a year ago with Biden announcing that he would not seek a second term. Or with him telling Kamala Harris privately that he would appoint her to the next vacancy of the Supreme Court, but he would not accept her as a Vice Presidential candidate. Then he could have replaced her with a person whom he regarded as having presidential qualities.

Personally, I wonder if he is going to make it through the end of his first term without being 25th Amendmented. I doubt very much that he can make it through an entire second term. Well, maybe he can: Reagan completed his second term while being first one, then two, and then three bricks short of a load. Took a bunch of Wizard of Oz little-man-behind-the-curtain stuff. That what we want in this case? Failing that, we could end up with President Harris.

Early on, I had thought that Biden might use his cabinet as a proving ground for younger successors. If that’s what he did the Harris and Pete Buttigieg have flopped badly.

As a “Never-Trump-Deplorable,” this puts me in an awkward position. My own preference for a Democratic candidate would be either Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Raimondo ) or Colorado Governor Jared Polis (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Polis ). That probably dooms the both of them. Such are my magical powers, alas.