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Not sure I agree with this or that the data does either. If there did exist 'Generic Democrat' waiting in the wings - a candidate everyone had been secretly hungry for in '20 that never threw in their hat - then maybe so. If Andrew Cuomo hadn't been MeToo'd and his corona press conferences in the windbreakers were everyone's last memory of him, maybe so.
But the democrat bench is structurally unsound to a degree that's been (imo) hidden by the conspiracy of silence surrounding the topic. The GOP in '16 (their last contested primary) had an embarrassment of riches, which the media lovingly referred to as the 'clown car.' Like 6+ popular governors running (Jindal, Perry, etc), some from non-traditionally safe republican states (Bush, Kasich, Walker, etc). All those guys are completely wiped out, granted, but the GOP has been consistently spitting out new guys like Vance, Hawley, etc for '28
The democrats have had exactly 1 clear-the-benches primary this entire century. '00 was smooth sailing for Gore, '04 for Kerry, '08 was Clinton-until-it-wasn't, '12 incumbent Obama, '16 Clinton-and-it-was.
But in '20 when the opportunity was ripe and it was all hands on deck, the democrats were running Joe, Bernie, Kamala, Warren, and the mayor of some town in Indiana. There was and is no Klobmentum.
Frankly, it seems to me as though their repeated decisions to 'clear-the-board' for their preferred candidate rather than the benches, the party may have cooked itself for the foreseeable future
And that's just off the top of my head.
/u/Outlaw83 "Yup!"
Shapiro by admission quite publicly of democrat party elders is a no go because he's a Jew
Polis (he changed his name from Schutz a few years ago 'because he liked it better'), see above. Also he's gay. A gay Jew for VP?? Maybe we're there already and I'm even more wrong then I thought I was, sure, but...to put him up as a bencher is bizarre
The rest of the 'top of your head' is the same. Beshear put all the kids in masks, closed all the small businesses, released uncountable numbers of violent criminals, and the day before it was all challenged...dropped it all. Machin is not even a democrat anymore dude. Newsome has failed to actually fix anything in CA so hard he's driven literally millions of taxpayers to other states. Pritzker is a 400lb Hermaeus Mora tentacle figure who nobody besides the two of us even knows, and if they did, I doubt they'd be enthralled. AOC???? And people still talk about Whitmer because she faked a kidnapping plot.
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Yup, this weird view the Democrat's have no bench just isn't true. Roy Cooper, Tim Walz, Mark Kelly, and others you haven't listed are also reasonable contenders.
The actual dirty little secret is the GOP bench is kind of bare, when it comes to people who appeal to the median voter - yes, there are plenty of candidates who win red states by 20, but outside of that, when it comes to swing state or blue state Republican's with any crossover appeal who have a chance of winning a MAGA-tilted primary, there's Brian Kemp from Georgia and that's about it, and even he has obvious issues with the whole "not going along with Trump after 2020."
The reality is, in 2028, if Kamala wins this time, and the ticket is say, J.D. Vance/Kristi Noem, I'll have zero worries about that ticket outside of a 2008-style economic collapse.
It's a shame that DeSantis flamed out so spectacularly against Trump - someone who can take a purple state and turn it blood red through competence and effective culture-warring, as DeSantis did in FL., would definitely belong on that list.
I’m not sure he is dead. If Trump loses, then he is the favorite for 2028. He lost due to the cult of Trump (RDS still had high favorables among the base—just they preferred orange man).
I hope you're right.
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Oh, I am not saying the Democrats had a particularly better candidate. But Biden in his current state was about the worst candidate they could have - just about anyone else will give them more of a fighting chance. You are right that the Democrats have left themselves with no real good options.
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