On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, John Kerry was forced to push back on a rumor that he privately floated jumping into the 2020 race if Joe Biden cratered in the polls. In typical John Kerry fashion, he botched the rollout.
Kerry tweets again, loses the f-word https://t.co/hMxBl4fiku
— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) February 2, 2020
It’s highly possible the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee is telling the truth. As the architect of most of the disastrous policies of the Obama administration, Kerry would hardly be a better sell as a centrist than Biden, and Democrats didn’t want him 16 years ago, why would they have a change of heart for the straight, cisgender, white septuagenarian in our current woke times?
But the real reason this rumor is nothing to take seriously is because the only Democrat not in the fray who could save the party from Bernie Sanders with a Hail Mary candidacy declaration is Michelle Obama, perhaps the only party celebrity who refuses to run for the presidency.
The former first lady is the most admired woman in the country, beating Melania Trump twice over in Gallup’s poll. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who soured in public opinion the more time she spent in the spotlight, Obama found her footing and national favor during her eight years in the East Wing. Since President Trump took office, she has blossomed into a bestselling author, style icon, and media maven.
Although first ladies often rank as the nation’s most respected women, if Obama decided to throw her hat into the political ring, she would face far fewer charges of nepotism than her predecessors. She graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School to catapult a successful corporate career in her own right. Sure, she had a fine series of the usual feats achieved by first ladies, but, more importantly, Obama cemented herself as an orator rivaled only by her husband. Glenn Beck called her speech at the last Democratic National Convention “the most effective political speech since Ronald Reagan.” Seeing as Obama came away the star of that convention and Clinton still managed to throw it, Beck’s diagnosis may have ended up off the mark, but its ethos was undeniable.
No other Democrat in the country has the name recognition, popularity, and mood suiting the moment than Obama. Oprah? Too old and too enmeshed in her own #MeToo-adjacent scandals to be considered a safe bet. Clinton? And what? Let her lose the presidency for a third time? There is no other candidate who could do what Obama is capable of and in the only other circumstances in which it would be necessary.
Consider, for centrists to begin melting down in earnest, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg would have to flame out entirely in Iowa, and Biden would have to lose the bulwark of his support: older voters, black voters, but especially black women. If Michael Bloomberg’s No. 1 priority is to prevent Sanders from succeeding, then “Mini Mike” would toss his millions toward an Obama bid.
Obama wouldn’t just run away with the nomination. She’d be the single most formidable candidate to contest Donald Trump. As recently as the end of October, voters told Fox News that they’d be overwhelmingly more likely to choose Obama in a primary than any other candidate. Whereas Biden earned 31% support in the poll, 50% of those polled said they would “definitely” vote for her if she threw her hat in the ring, and another 39% said they would “consider” voting for her. And, if she ran, it’s hard to see how she wouldn’t be a compelling candidate in a general election.
The good news for Trump is that she won’t run. As her book made clear, she has no taste for the petty bureaucracies of the presidency, and, more importantly, she’s smart enough to know where the real power lies. It’s certainly not in the White House.
