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The problem with this theory is all the likely Democrat candidates are poisonous in their own right.
Newsom comes up constantly, but California and his governorship of it in particular is practically a cautionary to the rest of America. Virtually the entire comedy scene had to flee his state due to mismanagement and talks about it all the time on podcast, interviews, standup specials.
Gretchen Witmer comes up, I can't tell why. The only thing she's notable for is participating in one of the few FBI entrapment plots/misinformation events that was so bad it actually did get thrown out of court.
There is Harris, but while Biden at least has the excuse of dementia, it's unclear what Harris' excuse for her constant word salads are. She polls worse than anyone.
Buttigieg I guess still exist, but has overseen possibly one of the most disastrous 4 years the Department of Transportation has ever seen. Rail disasters, air disasters, bridge disasters, you name it. It's hard to imagine failing up with that public a record of incompetence.
And that's more or less all the contenders unless Bernie Sanders wants to give it another go. But after how the DNC ratfucked him to position Biden as the nominee in 2020, I sincerely doubt they'd tap him for 2024, even if he is politically the least toxic candidate.
There is always RFK Jr... but the DNC ratfucked him in the 2024 primaries as well, and will almost certainly not tap him either.
There's another suggestion I see mooted pretty often that isn't on your list: Michelle Obama. Mostly, that she's got name recognition, a lot of the same identity politics positives as Harris without some of the latter's particular negatives, and she's only 60. I'm not sure how plausible the argument for her as a candidate is though.
Another one I've seen raised a couple times, that I do think is rather implausible, but which I'll also include for completeness, is to replace Biden with Biden… that is, with Jill Biden. Besides the usual "first woman president" thing, the argument goes that, as she's clearly one of the main people actually making the decisions and running things, she can run on this "job experience."
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Beto is the best shot. He won’t win, but his actual scandals are a drunk driving charge that got dismissed under funny circumstances. He’s a normal white guy who at least tries to talk to proles, so he won’t come off as DEI, and the dems are enthralled enough with his lackluster political performance to bypass those concerns. He’s too dumb to try anything overly clever and willing to play towards the middle. He can at least get dem normies to show up well enough so he doesn’t throw Virginia and Colorado and lose senate races that should go dem.
I donno. He has a habit of confidently blundering onto third rails as though the entire rest of the country consist of his political consultants. Instead of mealy mouthed lies about "common sense gun control" that might at least fool enough people who care to win, he just goes all in with "Hell yes we're coming for your guns!" for example.
As bad as the "coming for your guns" is, it's nothing compared to "we should tax religions I don't like." Beto has been one of my go-to examples for why the Culture War is terminal, and the counter-argument previously was that Beto was a minor, dead-end presidential contender of no consequence. I was assured that his naked appeal to intolerance, for which his audience cheered and which the press responded to by stroking their chins thoughtfully, should not be taken as representative of Blue Tribe generally. Charitably, we shouldn't see him floated as a serious candidate now, because of course Blues wouldn't rally behind such an obviously unfit candidate.
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Sure, but at this point actually winning the election is a tall order, it’s about giving normie dems and dem leaning independents someone they wouldn’t be ashamed to vote for so trump doesn’t win blue states and Kari Lake stays out of the senate.
Yeah, I have heard some of that talk. Replace Biden not to win the presidency, but rescue the down ballot races. Breaking Points keeps covering polls indicating that down ballot dems are doing fantastic even when Biden is polling horrendously, the theory being there might be significant ticket splitting. Personally I think it's more likely people just stay home.
I just struggle with the notion that run of the mill liberals could get excited about anyone nakedly appointed by a cabal of donors and party insiders. But then again I'm not a liberal, so what do I know? The same thing more or less happened with Biden, and I'm expected to believe he got the most votes of anyone any in history.
‘Willing to vote for’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘excited’.
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Newsom’s California reputation isn’t as bad as you suggest nationally. If someone brings up how badly California is run he can reel off richest state, home to big tech, home to entertainment, major tourism destination, economic powerhouse of America, yeah it has problems but it’s the best of what America can be etc. Trump fires back by calling cities violent dumps full of crime and homeless tents, but almost all people who believe that and really care about it either live in deep blue cities in blue states (and Trump isn’t going to win California or NY) or already vote for him. Gavin can also reply that crime is much higher in red states (reasons are unimportant and even Trump isn’t going there).
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It’s actually a bummer that Amy Klobuchar has completely and permanently disappeared from this conversation. I’ve said before that I was enthusiastic about her candidacy during the 2020 primary season. She’s still only 64 - an absolute spring chicken compared to the current candidates - with a long and unimpeachably successful political career. Now, in the intervening years she has revealed herself to be less moderate/non-progressive than she appeared in early 2020; she was an intense COVID hawk, and has been absolutely abysmal on free speech/“fighting disinformation” issues as of late. However, I would still compare her very favorably to all of the individuals you have listed. I can imagine a future timeline in which I would consider voting for her, if the Republican nominee is wacky/unqualified enough. The “moderate, technocratic wing” of the Democrats might be in full thrall, at least rhetorically, to the wacko wing at this juncture in time, but if it ever reasserts itself, she’d be a great representative on paper.
However, she appears to have been permanently blacklisted from consideration due to the absolutely pathetic complaint that, in her former capacity as county attorney in Minneapolis’ Hennepin County, she didn’t terminate Officer Derek Chauvin after some (almost certainly specious and worthless) complaints were lodged against him. Even though the Dems have largely stopped talking about George Floyd and the “Racial Reckoning”, she’s still too toxically adjacent to it to ever be a choice that the progressive base would accept. Yet another thing the Summer of George permanently stole from us.
Amy Klobuchar couldn’t name the President of Mexico over a year into his term. She sat on the Senate Commerce Committee at the time, and Mexico was our largest trading partner
(Nota bene Klobuchar doesn’t show any recognition when given López Obrador‘s name - she doesn’t go “Oh, AMLO, of course!” like anyone with passing familiarity to the leader would, but rather stares daggers at the host)
Given technocracy refers to rule by qualified experts, I’m puzzled why she of all candidates is meant to exemplify those traits?
I don't know much anything about Klobuchar, but I wonder if there exist any politicians, regardless of the smarts level, who hasn't committed at least one gaffe like that that can be conveniently brought up to go "Wotta idiot!" by the opponents.
AMLO is, if not quite a household name, someone that the politically informed could be expected to know of in the USA(although perhaps knowing what it stands for is too much).
I guess I'm not politically informed, then.
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What about that former astronaut? Mark Kelly.
I mean, what about Santa Claus? The nominee will never be Mark Kelly.
Why not?
The Democratic Party is all in on identity politics. They can't put some random white man on the ballot ahead of Harris.
Only a heavy hitter like Newsom could do it, and it would be a major struggle.
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That's why it has to be an unknown with no slate of known negatives, or a celebrity who can drown out the negatives with new voters.
If either Oprah or Clooney was willing to do it they’d have been drafted in years ago.
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The Wicked Witch of the Midwest is also known for being one of the 5 governors to send COVID patients to nursing homes (Newsom is another), and for COVID restrictions which were arbitrary and capricious even by blue state standards. This is significant in that it means she provides no hope of bringing pre-debate RFK Jr. supporters back into the fold.
My theory is this would be a positive for Whitmer: Blue Voters don't care if the experts may have accidentally been a tiny bit overzealous in saving the world from Covid, and if Red Voters hate it, she must be onto something!
I suspect most pre-debate RFK Jr. supporters are COVID single-issue voters from the blue side of the aisle.
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