December 18, 2023 - 6:05pm
Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers are inciting panic among Democratic Party insiders, not to mention the progressive tech oligarchs who bankrolled his 2020 campaign. As the President rages about his poor ratings, even sympathisers in the media are no longer casting him as the next FDR; more, they’re increasingly pleading for him to exit the race for the White House.
Biden appears unaffected, though, and has just raised a large amount of money from Hollywood players. Part of the problem may be the lack of viable alternatives. Vice President Kamala Harris polls about as poorly as her boss, while other Democratic candidates, usually from the gubernatorial class, have economic records that do not even measure up to Biden’s .
California’s Gavin Newsom, anointed by some in the press as the future of the party, now suffers his highest disapproval level ever. His claim about the Golden State’s “peerless economy”, made in his debate with Florida’s Ron DeSantis, reflects either calculated dishonesty or utter delusion. Despite California’s historic allure, far more Americans prefer the hurricane swamp of Florida to the Golden State’s natural majesty.
California has among the highest unemployment rates in the US, is one of the slowest growing states, and continues to suffer a huge outmigration of companies and people. It now has a remarkable $68 billion budget deficit, brought about in part by an unprecedented exodus of wealthy residents. The deficit complicates Newsom’s policy of extending largesse to his biggest backers, the public employee unions. He has ceded support for his backing of social policies such allowing children to change genders without parental approval, all while fostering the highest crime rate in a decade.
Damaged though Newsom’s appeal might be, the other big Democrat pushing for the White House, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, arguably has an even worse record. Like California, his state has fallen behind on unemployment, performing well below its Midwestern neighbours. Due to excessive expenditures and weak incomes, Illinois now places 49th in US News fiscal rankings.
Both the state and its dominant city, Chicago, are in demographic and economic free-fall. In 2022 over 80% of Illinois communities lost residents, with Chicago shrinking by more than 30,000 people. The state is also losing its tax base. Over the past year alone, Illinois has lost three major companies — Boeing, Caterpillar and Ken Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer might make a worthier case for a White House run. But she too has baggage, some of it tied to her authoritarian Covid policies, which were among the most extreme nationally. Even her own husband violated the rules she set. Whitmer has not been able to resuscitate Michigan’s long-suffering economy, compounded by low levels of population growth. Her bets on the electric car industry have been undermined by slower than expected growth, and the industry is now experiencing a spate of white-collar layoffs while EV and battery production continues to cluster in non-union sunbelt locations. The state’s dominant city, Detroit, continues to shrink and remains among the country’s most dangerous places.
Whitmer is also in a plainly difficult position when it comes to the Middle East. Her state has a significant, and an increasingly alienated, Muslim population, amid broader global tensions. Yet Jews have long been and continue to be a prominent force in the state’s Democratic Party. If she were to run for president, Whitmer would have to be careful not to alienate Jewish voters in key states like New York, California, and New Jersey, while avoiding the wrath of Muslim voters in her home state.
Then there is New Jersey’s junior senator, Cory Booker. He may not have a budget deficit to worry about, at least outside of the obscene one in Washington, but he has squandered much goodwill among moderates with his “Spartacus” posturing in recent years. He also carries the burden of being the former mayor of Newark, which still suffers a poverty rate three times that of New Jersey overall, and remains among the most crime-ridden places in the country. Although he made a bold attempt to fix schools, with a $100 million gift from Mark Zuckerberg, little has changed, and the reforms are widely believed to have failed.
What to make of all this? If Biden is a poor candidate, it would seem his potential replacements are hardly any better. Democrats should be careful what they wish for.
Joel Kotkin is the Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and author, most recently, of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (Encounter)
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SubscribeBiden probably still is the strongest candidate. His greatest weakness, his age, is also his strength. He was a Senator from Delaware before being VP, the product of an earlier era and a very different political climate, so he can’t be as easily pigeon holed into the modern mold of liberal Democrats. He isn’t associated with some of the loonier ideas of the woke left that have come about in the last decade or so.
The problem the Democrats have is that there isn’t a younger version of Biden. Take a look at a map of the counties in the US won by Clinton/Biden vs. Trump and you’ll see what I mean. A huge majority of the country is red, and much of it deep red. The pockets of blue represent the major urban centers. Most Democrats follow a career path that starts in one of the major cities, whose politics are far too liberal for most of Americans.
Despite being the establishment party, the Democrats have few political representatives that started their careers as centrists, because in the few places Democrats control, centrists can’t win. It’s a problem that has been ripening for quite a while, and the fruits are starting to fall. The Democrats have no good answer after Biden. He’s likely the last of his generation who will be President. After that, the Democrats will have to own up to what they are, a party of academics, elitists, and technocrats clinging to power by pandering to the lowest common denominator, racial grievances.
There is a school of thought that the Democrats need someone who had to fight to win a swing State, not someone from a State where Democrats win as a matter of course.
As someone who has followed Joe Biden’s career as he fumbled his way to the presidency, I’d say the perfect example of his ineptitude is that he has supported the wrong side of every single major foreign policy issue upon which Congress voted since he first took office as a U.S. Senator.
A remarkable accomplishment indeed, although not one to celebrate during an election year.
Surely what are the “right” and “wrong” sides of any foreign policy issue is a matter of opinion. Maybe his just differs from yours?
Well, Joe was the lone voice declaring the Seals should not go in when they found Bin Laden in 2010. He later tried to change his story.
Or how about his leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in modern military equipment at Bagram air base to the Taliban?
Or how about abandoning the 1,000s of Aghans who supported U.S. efforts in Afghanistan to their fate with no warning?
There are others you can research.
And, yes, idiotic decisions like these are ones with which I disagree.
That really should be obvious to everyone, especially the Democrats and the media that props them up, yet for some reason they think Gavin Newsom is a great candidate. What can I say. Can’t fix stupid.
The problem with those Red/Blue maps is that they jump out as overwhelminglly Red based upon geography. The Blue areas are smaller, but it is where large numbers of people live. When the Red/Blue maps use a baseline of people vs geography a different story emerges. In fact, since 1992 the Republicans have carried the majority of voters only once in a Presidential election (2004). Right now, for a general election, it comes down to who can appeal to the independent voters who number roughly 30% of the electorate. The edge in popular vote will remain with the Democrats in Presidential Elections if they can hold the independents. How the Electoral College plays out is a different complicating issue.
As we’ve learnt in Britain whoever controls the education system will ultimately rule. That battle was lost by conservatives everywhere a long time ago.
Also helps to control the voting machines, social media and the mail-in ballots.
“The edge in popular vote will remain with the Democrats in Presidential Elections if they can hold the independents.” This is completely irrelevant to winning a presidential election (absent a constitutional amendment). The Electoral College is not a “complicating issue” – it is a decisive, insurmountable issue.
You’re both right and wrong. On a factual level, you’re correct, but in the end that means very little, because the American system is not as democratic as the UK at a national level. There are no popular elections nationally. Representatives are elected from particular geographic districts and Senators are elected from states. The Presidential election uses a complicated process called the electoral college that is sufficiently complicated I won’t get into it here, but what it boils down to is there are fifty separate state elections, most of which are winner take all, with each state being weighted based upon Senators plus Representatives. As such, geography matters, arguably more than population. The system was deliberately designed so that densely populated areas could not dominate national policy. Jefferson in particular feared this scenario because it existed in Europe and understood that the US, even as it was before the Louisiana Purchase, would be much larger than European states and have far more divergent interests between regions. None of the founding fathers believed in direct democracy at such a large scale and all of them feared mob rule. Moreover, the smaller states would never have signed a Constitution that guaranteed large population states like NY and Pennsylvania would dominate national politics. The somewhat undemocratic national government is a feature, not a bug. It is an imperfect system designed to allow a lot of intranational regional competition and low level political strife by giving outlets to regions through state governments and through geographic representation to the national government.
Much of this is probably past due for some reforms, particularly the electoral college, but good luck pushing that through a Congress that can’t even reliably pass the budget. Polarized politics have drastically limited what can be accomplished at the national level, and since reforming the system requires the same body to act, there is little prospect for meaningful reform. Even if there was a groundswell of support for systematic reform, the same dynamics are at play today as in 1791, perhaps to an even larger degree. Small states and rural areas don’t want to be beholden to the interests of the megacities, and would resist any true move toward a national democracy. There is still a significant degree of regional tribalism in the US. Certainly not like in Europe where the nations and cultures are much older, but America is old enough now to have diverged to an extent, as evidenced by an increasingly polarized national government. Reform might have been achievable during the height of the Cold War in the fifties or in the prosperous 90’s. Now, any attempt would probably trigger a constitutional crisis or even a civil war. It’s arguable whether the US could exist at all without its more undemocratic features.
The US is more analogous to the whole EU than it is to the nations that make up the EU, and it is experiencing similar difficulties, with the caveat that these problems have basically always existed here so it isn’t really news. The results are likely to be the same as well, a less powerful central government with states acting autonomously on some issues. Just recently, Texas authorized their state police to arrest migrants. This probably won’t stand up in court, but Texas could also ignore the court ruling. Such things are not unheard of in American history. It probably looks like an absolute mess to outsiders, but don’t be shocked if the US has a seemingly miraculous recovery and return to sanity in the next decade or so, because it’s happened before. The American system is like a battleship. It is slow, complex, inefficient, difficult to maintain, but very hard to sink.
However divided the US may seem now, one can’t lose sight of the fact that it had a Civil War 150 years ago.
Quite true, but that war was by and large fought over a single issue, slavery. I submit that at this time, there is no comparable issue that has such profound moral, political, and economic ramifications that it is impossible to conceive of any compromise or that is so intolerable that it is deemed worth the cost of a second Civil War. A Civil War now would have profound global implications. It would be the most significant upheaval in western civilization since the fall of the Roman Empire, and since we live in a globalized world, the consequences would be felt everywhere.
Personally I can’t imagine it actually happening. The US had almost no standing national army in 1860 that was capable of intervening one way or the other. Obviously that’s no longer the case. The military is its own creature with its own leadership and is mostly independent of, and occasionally hostile to, the politicians. If the political situation got so bad that there was a danger of one side using US troops on US soil, the military might comply, or they might decide that rather than blow up the country, it would be easier and more pragmatic to march into DC, throw all the politicians, lobbyists, and bureaucrats out, seize the government, declare martial law, and either set up a new Constitutional Convention or just rule themselves, depending on the circumstances at the time and the people involved. Moreover, most Americans would probably accept that result as being better than the alternative because they don’t trust the government as it exists and wouldn’t stick their necks out to defend it anyway.
I dismissed Joe Biden as a hack, and a not very bright one, in 1988 and in the interim my opinion of the man has only worsened. He is a pandering, lying, corrupt, quasi senescent hack with no fixed principles other than the advantage and advancement of Joe Biden and his venal family. Product of an earlier era, no, more like a persistent polyp; in the words of Joel Kotkin (in another article), a reliable cog in the DC machinery, and about as smart as a cog.
Harsh assessment, but basically correct, although I’m not sure about his “venal family.” I can’t bring myself to vote for someone who stood by and did nothing about the genocide occurring in Gaza, other than to claim to the Israeli government that we have their backs and to send billions more in weapons to continue/escalate the slaughter. .
Hunter Biden on the phone to business client: “I’m sitting here next to my father who, of course, has no financial interest in my business, has no idea what this call is about, and is actually asleep as we speak.”
Your comment is an insult to pandering, lying, corrupt, quasi senescent hacks with no fixed principles everywhere.
At least they have standards.
Well, I was trying to be diplomatic. There were a lot of Biden era politicians who might as well have been clones of him and of each other, because there simply was not as much civil conflict as there is now, nor was there a pressing need for visionary leadership. America was mostly doing well enough. Politicians could mostly continue the same policies, pick at the margins, and slightly alter their rhetoric based on the mood of the country and the issues of the day. That was sufficient for political success and to be perceived as an acceptable leader, because not much leadership was actually needed. Now America desperately needs leadership and change, so much so that Americans were willing to elect a loud-mouthed celebrity who has, in addition to his resorts and real estate business, also been an attention seeking professional jack-ass. The Biden administration might actually inspire them to do so a second time. What passed for leadership in the 80’s isn’t cutting the mustard now, and as lacking in effective leaders as the Republican side is, the Democrats are even worse off for the reasons I mentioned.
Ronald Reagan wasn’t particularly smart either, and he was a great President.
Good description of the modern Starmer “led” Labour party then.
No matter what you think of Starmer, it is unarguable that he is more electorally palatable than Corbyn was.
” A huge majority of the country is red, and much of it deep red”
By acreage perhaps but in terms of votes, which is what actually counts, the Democrat candidate for president has won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections. It is the far right extremism represented by Trump that is too much for most Americans but their lunatic election system keeps letting them in.
Wow – winning the popular vote is exactly what doesn’t count in US presidential elections.
Yeah, ask Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by a significant margin and that margin has a name: California.
” . . . in terms of votes, which is what actually counts, the Democrat candidate for president has won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections.”
Well, this is one of those instances in which your statement is factual, but ignores other facts that actually indicate the opposite may be true.
For example, citizens vote for a slate of electors in their home state. It is the electors who then vote for the president.
In almost all states it’s a winner takes all vote. In other words, if 50.00001% of voters vote for the Democratic electors, all the electoral votes go to the Democratic presidential candidate.
In California (55 electoral votes–270 needed to clinch the presidency), 47% of voters are Democrats, 24% are Republicans and 37% are independent. A Democratic presidential candidate only needs a quarter of the independents to win all the electors. Overall, California is at the Federal, State, and Local level overwhelmingly Democratic. So, as a direct consequence, the voter turnout of Republicans and Independents in elections is proportionately much lower than Democrats because everyone knows the Democrats are almost certain to win. This pushes down the real number of popular votes tallied for Republicans, since many know their vote is pointless. And California’s population is so large, almost 40 million (more than 10% of the U.S. population), that these vote totals impact how the popular vote looks nationwide.
Other areas have the same issue, the District of Columbia is one, and New York another where Democrats hold sway.
In short, since the U.S. is not a direct democracy, popular vote tallies don’t really tell the true story.
Tom, it’s both the strength and weakness of a ‘first past the post’ system. We have a similar system and similar issue in the UK. I live in a Conservative constituency and there’s virtually no point in voting Labour, let alone Liberal.
However, we have two houses of Parliament. I’ve often what our politics would look like if the ‘Commons’ retained the first past the post system but the’Lords’ were proportional representation based on the same single vote. Everybody’s vote would count, to some extent. There would be no tactical voting. My only concern would be that some might think that the ‘Lords’ was a more legitimate level of Government than the ‘Commons’ particularly when they send new laws back to the Commons for redraft!
“But, but, but; if Biden is not re-elected, we might get Orange McBadman and that will mean the end of democracy.”
That is a mainstream mindset on the American left. To save democracy, they must prevent it from occurring. Things that Trump’s critics warn that he may do, Team Biden is already doing.
They can’t let Trump win. And ‘they’ includes a representative group from the right. This vulgarian crashing their club and acting as if public office means the people matter.
In reality, we’ve seen Trump. No, he’s not Jefferson. Nor is he Stalin. No one can say things are better now than when he left. I’d like to think the election will play out with no talk of shenanigans and people will abide by the result. But I would not bet on that happening.
“No one can say things are better now than when he left”
Anyone who checks key economic indicators would say they are very much better than when Trump left.
But I realize that facts don’t matter to anyone deluded enough to vote for a fat clown like Trump.
It’s a leftist thing, isn’t it? Make a large and utterly implausible claim with no evidence at all and pad it out with childish and gratuitous insults and narcissistic bloviating. What indicators?
CS is using satire to call attention to the disparate Impact of fatphobia felt by Persons with Robust Storages of Fatty Tissues.
He’s explaining that a tolerant society should celebrate and affirm Fatness as the Liberation of a historically marginalized population.
Dow Jones is at record highs.
Low unemployment – certainly compared to Trump’s catastrophic numbers.
Want more?
Civilian unemployment rate (bls.gov)
Official figures which demonstrate that the unemployment rate fell consistently under Trump, right up to the Covid hiatus. The figures have stayed around the same level under Biden as Trump achieved before that point.
Yep, give us more falsehoods, pathetically easy to disprove.
Nearly all of the job growth in the economy in November came from just three sectors: health care, government employment, and leisure and hospitality. WooHoo!!! People know when they are being crushed economically.
Good job you have feelings to rely on, Jim, when all of the metrics are against you!
The employment figures are tricky. Employment dropped as a result of the pandemic under Trump; Biden hasn’t created any new jobs for all-intensive purposes but has enjoyed the ride back up to full employment as the economy recovered. Biden has passed no policies which have intrinsically increased employment beyond what it was pre-pandemic.
Biden’s bane is INFLATION. Folks feel it. That and the totally open border and the costs it is imposing in localities across the country will be biting him in the butt all the way to November 2024.
So is oil and gas production,
Biden is even getting increases in coal production.
Fossil fuel business is booming now that we have a President Biden devoting himself to switching to a green economy, away from fossil fuels.
Joe just can’t stop himself failing, can he?
You sound like Obama gloating about the stock market ‘rrroaring back’ during the Jobless Recovery he presided over.
What color is the sun on your planet? You know, the one where people are not maxed out on credit cards, where the border has not been overrun, and where crime has not infested almost every city.
Homelessness is also at an all-time high…
Anyone who checks key economic indicators would say they are very much better than when Trump left.
Which patently you haven’t
You had Sam Harris in one of his recent regrettable interviews refer to Trump’s reelection in 2020 to be akin to a meteoric catastrophe….as if Americans hadn’t just been through four years of it which, aside from the pandemic response, were rather great and peaceful. His election in 2016 simply broke many people.
That’s what really amazes me about this ‘Trump reelection apocalypse’ narrative. To believe it, you have to rewrite the history of 2016-2020.
And the history of 2021-23.
“I’d like to think the election will play out with no talk of shenanigans and people will abide by the result“. I’d like to think that too, but we are talking about Trump.
As Obama said, elections have consequences. So does the way they are won. Following the Obama playbook by pandering to the base including public sector unions and Big Tech and Big Law donors, focusing on getting the sectional vote out rather than engaging with swing voters, and relying on smears and fear rather than articulating a generous, patriotic vision, may win elections. But it makes for lousy governance.
In the polarised world of American politics the basket of commendables (the Democratic base) is getting smaller so the basket of deplorables is getting bigger.
They are not tremendously concerned with actually governing.
Well, that is the truest statement I’ve read in a while. Governing? Interesting concept.
It was the Clintons’ realisation that, in terms of fundraising, it’s better to be the party of Wall Street than the party of Main Street, that was really the turning point. Hence Obama’s abject behaviour in the face of the corruption there.
The Republicans didn’t realise until too late that their role as the party of the financial and business elites had been usurped. Some still haven’t caught on.
His claim about the Golden State’s “peerless economy”, made in his debate with Florida’s Ron DeSantis, reflects either calculated dishonesty or utter delusion.
Well, I mean, technically he’s right about California’s economy being “peerless”.
What a crap show. If you think Biden has drank the koolaid when it comes to net zero, Whitmer is even more deluded.
I am going to play a little game in the run up to the US elections. It’s going to be a bit like that one Christina Ricci played in Mermaids where she timed how long she could hold her breath underwater in the bath. I’m going to see how long I can go without reading anything about American politics.
Good luck! You’ll need a convent with a vow of internet silence.
I think we should all buy shares in popcorn. We’re going to need a lot of it in 2024.
..and a stiff drink
If Biden is the best example to aspire to for the Democrats, it’d be harder to find someone closer than Gavin Newsom to the description: a wealthy straight white man of Irish descent – only younger. I don’t think there’re that many of those left amongst Democrats anyhow. He appears to be a serial panderer and a man of his time and location, but isn’t Biden?
Biden is working class by background though, which I don’t think Newsom is. Biden can still carry of the “Average Joe” vibe even after a lifetime in politics, whereas Newsom just looks like a TV Anchorman.
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I just checked Newsom’s bio. He is definitely not, in any shape or form, “working class”.
Biden’s ‘working class’ image is taking a beating as it is being revealed the extent to which about a dozen of his family members have been on the grift using his power and name – and perhaps even he has been on the take as well? It’s rather mystifying that a man who’s been paid a Senator’s salary for 45 years owns two multi-million dollars houses / mansions and has repeatedly provided ‘loans’ to various family in the range of a half million dollars ….etc.etc….this story is being played out…
The same can be said for many in office. But Ole Joe happens to be the king of grift.
According to his tax returns he worth about $1, 850,000. His homes make up a good chunk of his worth. Can you give me the names of the 12 family members who have been on the grift, using his name?
I would have thought that a net worth of $1.85 million would make him one of the poorer people who have spent their life in Federal elected office.
Interesting point, didn’t know that. I think a white straight working class male Democratic leader is too much to ask in these days, so Newsom is all they will get.
Apparently Newsom is close friends with a member of the Getty family, who is an investor in all his businesses.
When you talk of “aspiring” to Biden’s example, I am flabbergasted what you could mean. Do you actually think he has crafted policy, let alone had an original Presidential thought in the last 3 years? He cannot even read his own teleprompter accurately. As soon as he goes off script, he is whisked off the stage by his handlers. The man publicly exhibits terminal dementia. What is he like in private? Would it make a difference if we found he was a hologram? He is the 46th US Wizard of Oz. Who is really behind the Biden presidency? I don’t know, but it’s not Joe. A shadowy power circle manages Joe’s every moment, allows him to eat ice cream and reminisce about an imagined past, and get angry and emotional because it plays well. That mirage is what Democrats want to re-elect. It’s all illusion. Gaslighting. A shell game. A bait and switch. No one knows who the Democrats will run in 2024, because it doesn’t matter. They ‘won’ an election in 2020 with a candidate who never left his basement. 2024 should be a breeze. This whole conversation is silly because it ignores the fact that the entire Biden presidency is an illusion, and we don’t know who is really behind the curtain.
Of course we do: 75% of Biden’s staff are former Obama administration staffers.
And, former President Obama purchased a nice home in DC so all the telephone calls from the White House are local.
The problem is the policies, which, they all share:
onerous green energy plans
destruction of the fossil fuel economy
unlimited handouts to students and preferred minorities
taxation
regulation
unlimited illegal immigration
monster surveillance state and suppresion of freedoms
stacking the supreme court and changing the electoral college ASAP
promotion of palestinian and iranian extremist groups
It’s all, uniformly, bad.
Having seen 4 years of Trump and 3 years of Biden, voters are realising Trump was better. And a further 5 years of Biden is unrealistic. Biden will be forced to drop out.
Trump wasn’t so bad while he was in power, but when he lost the election, he behaved in the way everybody knew he would – like a giant toddler.
A well thought out presentation, that factually details why the Democrats appear to have only one choice.
But, is that true?
Permit me to suggest one option that would clinch the Presidency for the next two terms. Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you the next President of the United States:
Michelle Obama
She remains the most popular woman in polls throughout the United States.
Her husband’s presidency is still recalled fondly by Democrats, and many non-aligned voters.
Three quarters of Joe Biden’s current White House staff served in the Obama administration.
She has sufficient credentials on her own, and implicitly will have the advice and counsel of her two-term husband.
She is vigorous, intelligent, well-spoken, and poised. Perhaps most importantly in what looks to be the current septuagenarian vs octogenarian contest, she would only be 68 at the end of her second term.
As a person of color she would bring together Blacks from all walks of life, and the overwhelming majority of Whites who voted for her husband.
I know she has rejected the possibility when asked, but presented as something she must undertake for the good of the nation, it’s a challenge she could accept without have to go through all the messy indignities, and potential problems of inadvertent missteps, while running in the primaries.
While I try to avoid making predictions, especially about the future, it would not surprise me to see Biden sweep through the primaries, and then decide to stand down to look after his family in crisis while throwing his support to Michelle.
Regardless of what evidence comes out regarding corruption in the Biden family, an Obama presidency would ensure a pardon if it ever got that far.
While this may seem an outlandish possibility, were I a Democrat I would look upon this option as the best way to secure the presidency for the next eight years.
I agree that the former First Lady would be the Dems’ best bet. But your obsequious assessment of her is truly vomit inducing. She’s just another member of the authoritarian elite so roundly despised by us regular folks. This is the part where you label me a racist and misogynist.
“Vomit inducing”?
I wouldn’t vote for her. She’s a globalist like her husband, and part of the problem rather than a source of solutions.
But, it is foolish to ignore how popular she is generally. Only by understanding a problem can one hope to address it.
She is vigorous, intelligent, well spoken and poised. That is the challenge that must be faced. Otherwise, one might as well give up, and just post whining vitriol on Unherd.
Or is that already your strategy?
Give up on what? To be clear, I don’t support the power mad Democrats. Which doesn’t mean I’m a Trump fanboy, both options are odious.
I believe that if Gavin Newsom is on the Democratic Presidential Ticket, Kamala Harris cannot also be on it, as they are both from California.
Interesting point.
It’s not really an issue. I hope these articles clear up the confusion (which is a common misconception among Americans)
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/01/03/civics-project-no-prohibition-against-president-vp-candidates-same-state/4089264001/
https://www.history.com/news/can-the-president-and-vice-president-be-from-the-same-state
Note: The Bush/Cheney ticket in 2000 almost made that close election problematic had Cheney not changed his Texas residency to Wyoming prior to his selection as running mate to Bush.
I did have a bit of a look at the technicalities of it, which I believe flows from the 12th Amendment. That dates back to the early 1800s, and probably made some sense then.
Democrats have come up with a sure-fire way to stop Trump winning.
They won’t let people vote for him, by refusing to print ballot papers with his name on them.
Such a simple idea!
Both Jared Polis (48) and John Hickenlooper (71) are fairly sensible Democrats. Plenty of experience both in Washington and at State level. Both are quite libertarian in many ways and are fairly popular across the divide. Both from Colorado which is an odd hybrid State full of ranchers, skiers, dropouts, prisoners and high tech folks.
Colorado has large numbers of US military as well, although they may vote in their home States.
Colorado is a state which is attacking Western democracy by refusing permission for political opponents to appear on the ballot.
What about Michelle
I think she must be waiting in the wings, just out of view
Perhaps they should have been more supportive of Robert F Kennedy Jr. He might seem loopy on the vaccines issue but he came across as a lot less divisive than any of the other candidates and even appealed to some Republicans. The Democrats have done their best to keep him at arm’s length.
Kotkin writes- “As the President rages about his poor ratings…” Really, Biden rages? I have never known Biden to be raging about anything. The Republicans have the rage candidate. Trump rages about everything and the people seem to love it. Trump is apparently leading in the polls since he is by far the most outrageous candidate. Clearly the outrageous have the advantage over the mediocre myriad.
When it comes to “outrageous”, I think Ramaswamy gives Trump a run for his money.
Never seen Biden rage about anything? Really?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QELPy_mAqiQ
Joe is like the John Prescott of American politics. Outbursts of anger, interspersed with loose syntax.
And moments of silent reflection
cognitive lapses.Just read an article comparing CA and TX, and CA did quite well.
In what regard?
It was likely from the NYT or WAPO.
Oh well, that settles it then. You might want to inform all the people and businesses who have left recently, as obviously they’ve made a huge mistake. Also be sure to tell all the people who used to be middle class, as CA has the biggest gap between rich and poor in the entire country.