With Democrats outperforming expectations on Tuesday, many see Biden as being emboldened to run for election in 2024 — despite being in an advanced state of fossilization.
Biden’s 2024 plans remain a big fat question mark, and he’s reportedly going to make a decision early next year. But one Republican strategist thinks there’s an alternative game plan for Biden: replace Kamala Harris with Gavin Newsom and then resign.
Douglas MacKinnon, who worked in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, argues that Biden and Harris’s unpopularity makes this a viable strategy for the Democrats if they want to hold onto the White House. MacKinnon argues that because Newsom exceeded expectations, his reelection in California was some tour de force and the Democrats’ bests hope of holding the White House.
I’m not sure how he reached the conclusion, but apparently, he thinks Newsom is the polished turd the Democrats need.
“Republicans can write off Newsom all they want as the politician who ‘ruined’ California. The fact is, he is a proven vote-getter and has a formidable Democratic machine behind him,” MacKinnon writes. “Might the Democrats leapfrog him into the Oval Office before 2024? It would be political malpractice for them not to consider the option.”
I think that’s ridiculous. California has been a solid blue state for most of my life, and Newsom won reelection by a smaller margin there than Gov. Ron DeSantis did in Florida — which has been a bellwether swing state for most of my life.
But the bigger problem with MacKinnon’s scenario is that there isn’t a chance that Joe Biden would cut Kamala Harris loose. Yes, she’s all sorts of horrible and terribly unpopular, but Joe Biden has banked so much of his presidential legacy on compensating for his being an old white guy and isn’t about to jettison a black woman in favor of another white dude. I don’t care how unpopular she is; that’s just not going to happen. If a vice presidential swap were to happen, Biden would sooner pick another woman or an African-American before choosing a younger version of himself.
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