Really? Hillary Clinton is the best option for Democrats to retain the presidency in 2024? That’s a testament to the empty bench below Biden even though it has names like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg sitting on it. Apparently, neither of those two lightweights seem palatable to Democratic Party insiders and strategists who fear a wipeout in 2022 and 2024 if the Biden-Harris administration continues to roll on leaving a mess behind it.
Back in December, it seemed Hillary was at least open to the idea when she announced a new MasterClass series on resilience. She kicked off the announcement by reading the 2016 victory speech she never got to deliver.
It seems like Democrats can’t get enough of Hillary Clinton despite her chilly personality. The alternative of letting Biden run in 2024 seems impossible, and Kamala Harris doesn’t seem any better. Are the political planets aligning for Hillary’s presidential comeback?
Two Democratic operatives see an opening for Hillary Clinton to run again for president in 2024.
A commentary article published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday makes the case that a “perfect storm” is brewing in the Democratic Party, including low approval numbers for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as questions about whether Biden, now 79, will be viable to run for a second term.
All this creates a “leadership vacuum,” according to Douglas Schoen, founder and partner of Schoen Cooperman Research, a polling and consulting firm whose past clients include Bill Clinton and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president, Manhattan borough president, and state assemblyman.
Clinton “is already in an advantageous position to become the 2024 Democratic nominee. She is an experienced national figure who is younger than Mr. Biden and can offer a different approach from the disorganized and unpopular one the party is currently taking,” they wrote.
“If Democrats lose control of Congress in 2022, Mrs. Clinton can use the party’s loss as a basis to run for president again, enabling her to claim the title of ‘change candidate,'” the pair added.
It’s not implausible. Democrats really don’t have any good options that will unify the party beyond Biden. Yes, Kamala Harris was supposed to be the anointed one, but she has performed so badly as Vice President, her future political career seems like it’s over before it began.
Pete Buttigieg? He’s busy taking victory laps having fully fixed the supply chain issue while grocery store shelves around the country still look like this:
A store near DC. Store shelves are empty. I didn't buy up all those products. So, where is our Transportation Secretary,"Mayor" Pete Buttigieg? He wants to run for president. I don't think he's ready if he can't fix transportation problems. pic.twitter.com/aczTxY18Ed
— JD (@jimmyjames_di) January 7, 2022
Great work, Pete!
So if Biden is out, Harris is out, and Buttigieg is out, does that leave the door open for Hillary Clinton in 2024? As the above article notes, Democrats losing in 2022 would bolster her case since it’s clear America would’ve shown that Biden’s leadership had failed.
The only problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes Hillary can somehow do a better job of uniting the country than Biden has. In what political world does that happen? Biden was sold during the 2020 campaign as the moderate friendly “Uncle Joe” promising the return to normalcy.
Instead, according to Joe Biden, if you don’t agree with nuking the filibuster, you’re now a racist. That’s the warm, unifying message coming from the White House this week. If Hillary can avoid similarly divisive rhetoric, maybe she has a shot.
Otherwise, if Democrats are so worried that their current crop of candidates is just that bad, maybe Hillary as a default “best option” is really just about keeping hope alive beyond Biden’s dismal first year.
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