I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks Biden would make a miserable 2020 candidate and an even worse president-- not worse than Trump, worse as a president than as a candidate. Let me just sit back and revel in Alex Shephard's piece for the New Republic about someone who shouldn't be the next nominee for president: This Is As Good As It Gets for Joe Biden.
Cory Booker's seat is up in 2020 but he persuaded New Jersey's very pliable legislature to pass a bill making it possible for "someone" to run for their Senate seat and for president at the same time. Booker has a ProgressivePunch "A" score. In fact, they rate his lifetime crucial vote record as the 4th best in the Senate, fractionally better than Bernie's! But he's not someone I'd vote for in a presidential primary.
As Jonathan Bernstein made clear in an OpEd yesterday for Bloomberg News, Americans have become inured to deceit and manipulation from our political class. And he wasn't even speaking about Trump. His piece was on Paul Ryan's farewell speech. Unlike many inside the Beltway, Bernstein has long recognized Ryan as a faker and a fraud.
He's not that bad. He'd be a better president than Michael Bloomberg or Kirsten Gillibrand or John Delaney. But the Biden people see Beto as a threat and the knives are out.
The same information can be presented in different ways to create or bolster different narratives. A Quinnipiac poll came out this morning and much of the establishment media presented it like this:
I always figured the battle for the Democratic nomination would pit a progressive, presumably Bernie, against a corporate Dem, like Biden or Bloomberg or Gillibrand...
OyLet me reiterate: Blue America backed Beto when he ran for Congress against conservative Democrat Silvestre Reyes in 2012. He wasn't a bad member of Congress but we were disappointed that he veered more centrist than his district and joined the New Dems. We didn't endorse him for reelection in 2014 or 2016 but we were one of the first groups outside of Texas to back him in his Senate bid against Ted Cruz.
Beating Trump in 2020, as I've written before, is urgent-- if not existential-- but making sure we think long and hard about what we replace him with is just as important. The conservative establishment is not stupid.
Who should be next in the popular series, "The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President?" Part III, at the end of November, was all about multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg. A mutual friend tells me he wasn't pleased with what I wrote about him. I'm sure he's gotten over it. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that he's still mullin' whether or not to run. I hope he asks people who don't stand to make small fortunes if he does run.
