Between Anthony Fauci’s appearance before Congress and President Joe Biden’s demagoguery in Georgia, it hasn’t exactly been a slow news week.
Yet, you’d think otherwise from following the commentary sections of some of the biggest newsrooms in the country.
Over in the world of political punditry, the main question for certain thinkers and scribblers this week doesn’t involve Biden’s push for “voting rights” or whether Fauci has misled the country regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, the most pressing matter is: Who should run for president in 2024?
Even worse than the question has been the responses.
At the Wall Street Journal, guest contributors Douglas E. Schoen and Andrew Stein believe the Democratic Party’s best bet in the next presidential election is to nominate two-timed failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“Hillary Clinton remains ambitious, outspoken and convinced that if not for Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey’s intervention and Russian interference that she would have won the 2016 election — and she may be right,” they write.
Schoen and Stein add, “If Democrats want a fighting chance at winning the presidency in 2024, Mrs. Clinton is likely their best option.”
Third time’s the charm, I guess.
At the New York Times, international cabbie correspondent Thomas Friedman believes a Biden ticket split with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming will help Democrats maintain control of the White House.
“As I’ve noted before, one reason I pay very close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian arena is that a lot of trends get perfected there first and then go global — airline hijacking, suicide bombing, building a wall, the challenges of pluralism and lots more,” begins his column. “It’s Off Broadway to Broadway, so what’s playing there these days that might be a harbinger for politics in the U.S.?”
He adds, “Answer: It’s the most diverse national unity government in Israel’s history, one that stretches from Jewish settlers on the right all the way to an Israeli-Arab Islamist party and super-liberals on the left. Most important, it’s holding together, getting stuff done and muting the hyperpolarization that was making Israel ungovernable.”
What in the world?
Friedman then writes: “Is that what America needs in 2024 — a ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney? Or Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or Stacey Abrams and Liz Cheney, or Amy Klobuchar and Liz Cheney? Or any other such combination. Before you leap into the comments section, hear me out.” Let’s not.
At the Bulwark, former Republican Bill Kristol has some equally mind-boggling advice for Democrats: Run in 2024 as an exclusively anti-Trump party.
“How much could Trump-caused, Trump-aligned, or Trump-adjacent madness damage Republican candidates in 2022?” he asks. “We don’t know, partly because we’ve never really had a situation like the current one.”
Kristol adds, “What we do know is that the great bulk of the Republican party’s candidates will be aligned with and perhaps seen to be marching behind a former president who’s not popular with swing voters, whose visibility could motivate lots of Democrats to vote, and whose behavior could make it far easier for Democrats to link Republicans to unpopular causes. The report by the January 6th Committee could play a role here too.”
Sure, this makes a lot of sense so long as you ignore Democrats tried exactly this strategy in this last round of elections, and they got electorally killed for it.
In Virginia, which is not exactly a Republican-friendly state, Democrats did exactly what Kristol recommends now: They made the 2021 elections a referendum on Trump, attempting in particularly embarrassing ways to tie Virginia GOP candidates to the former president. Democrats didn’t just lose in the Old Dominion State. They lost big. They lost the governor’s mansion, the offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general, and the House of Delegates. The problem is Democrats ran last year on a platform that amounted to little more than, “We’re not Donald Trump.” Democrats gave Virginians only something to vote against. They gave them nothing to vote for. And for this, they were defeated soundly at the ballot box.
What, then, leads Kristol to believe more of the same will work well for Democrats in 2024?
Are… are we being kidded? Was there some betting pool this week to see who could write the laziest, most uninspired think piece regarding the 2024 election? Was there a betting pool for most unhelpful, self-defeating advice? If so, between the suggestion that Democrats should give Hillary Clinton and that they should run as an anti-Trump party, I genuinely can’t tell who should walk away this week with the top prize.
