Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about who might replace Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee should he not run for reelection, and no honest person thinks he actually will.
Who will it be? CNN’s Chris Cillizza has already written up a list of the most commonly mentioned candidates and assessed their viability.
However, missing from his list is another person whose name has been thrown out there recently: Hillary Clinton.
Former Trump adviser Jason Miller thinks that Hillary Clinton is attempting to “inject” herself into the 2024 presidential race. “Hillary’s trying to humanize herself and inject herself into the 2024 presidential discussion. That’s all it is. Let’s just be brutally crass and direct about it,” Miller said during an episode of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast this week. “The fact of the matter is that Crooked [Hillary] is circling around Joe Biden almost like a buzzard looking at the carcass on the ground, saying, ‘It’s not going to be Joe Biden, it’s not going to be Kamala Harris. How can I go and insert myself into this national discussion and remind people that I’m still here?’”
Hillary certainly isn’t going away the way most failed presidential candidates tend to. She was a regular critic of Trump during his presidency, and this week, during an interview with the Today Show, she warned about his potential candidacy in 2024. “I think that could be the end of our democracy,” she said. “Not to be too pointed about it, but I want people to understand that this is a make-or-break point.”
It sure sounds like Hillary is positioning herself for 2024 speculation, but most people dismiss the idea.
“People may feel that they want to have a woman and may feel that [Vice President Kamala] Harris isn’t electable, but I do not think she’d be a serious candidate,” former Clinton strategist Dick Morris told the Washington Examiner. Morris not only believes that Biden won’t be on the ticket in 2024, but he doesn’t believe Kamala Harris will either.
Related: Hillary Thinks Americans Don’t ‘Really Appreciate’ Joe Biden
Unfortunately for Hillary, Democrats are also dismissing her return.
“There’s no appetite. None. Zero. I love her to death, but no,” a former swing state Democratic Party chair, and Clinton surrogate in 2008, told the Washington Examiner. “You’ve got to win. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.”
Many other former Clinton backers also reportedly “burst out laughing at the prospect of her return to the electoral fray.”
“That is hilarious. I mean, I was a Hillary supporter. I continue to be. She’s doing fantastic things. But I think she understands that to move the party forward into something new, [there] needs to be new blood,” one liberal 2020 campaign operative said.
“I don’t think the public is ready to welcome back Hillary Clinton on the left side, just like the public is probably not ready to welcome back a Bush on the Republican side,” said David Ramadan, an adjunct professor at the Schar School at George Mason University and resident scholar at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Hillary Clinton has certainly tried to remain relevant since her upset defeat in 2016, but she’s old news, and it seems unlikely her party would be willing to take another chance on her.
