Last week, I wrote about how former President Donald Trump’s best shot at winning the election is with President Joe Biden, a literal walking corpse, as his opponent. There are a lot of reasons for this. The Democrats, when united and galvanized, are a force unlike anything we’ve seen in modern politics. Their ability to muster votes, both real and fake, is unmatched, and their will to raw power rivals anything I’ve ever read about in a Tolkien novel. In any election and with any candidate, they will be hard to beat.
This year, this cycle, Republicans wanted to give Trump another bite at the apple, and he’s going to have it, whether or not he gets sentenced to actual prison a month before the election (he probably won’t, but the possibility exists). I have made the case many times that it was our weakest choice, but there’s no going back now. Democrats, on the other hand, are increasingly coming to the realization that Biden IS their weakest candidate and could very well lose an election they’ve long expected to win. And they’re hellbent on doing something about it.
We shouldn’t help them right their ship, but we also won’t be able to stop them if they do. The question then becomes, who do they choose? The practical choice seems to be Vice President Kamala Harris. She is second in line to Biden, but she also has all the diversity points Democrats so love to tout. No matter how bad a candidate she might be, Democrats will have a hard time dumping a black woman in favor of, say, a white man or even a white woman. (Unless they are gay, I suppose, but even if the gayness somehow evened out the diversity scales, they’d then likely have to defer to Harris’ rank.)
Could Trump beat Kamala? I don’t know, but I’m dubious. She would certainly be the weakest of the non-Biden candidates Democrats could offer up, but they would galvanize around her nonetheless. And as we all know from experience, they’d just need to pull within the margin of cheating in enough swing states to win the election. The age and feebleness issue would immediately go away. An argument could be made that once you remove those, Democrats could easily use their massive political machine to get almost anyone elected, even a weak, unlikeable vice president. But it’s far from a done deal, and early polling has Trump beating Kamala too, at least so far.
The other option for Democrats is to overlook Harris in favor of someone who checks at least as many diversity boxes as she does except also brings a better chance to win. That option, should they go with it, would be a nightmare scenario for Trump and Republicans. What, did you think these polling leads existed because Americans have suddenly fallen in love with Trump or have somehow seen the light and gotten more conservative? No, they exist because Biden is historically awful and Harris is historically unlikeable. Put a decent candidate in their place who can form a coherent sentence or keep from laughing awkwardly in the stupidest moments, and the five or so percent of voters who are currently holding their noses to express their support for Trump will come home to the Democrats in a heartbeat.
Who might that “decent candidate” be for the Democrats? I’ll give you two possibilities, both of which would be bad for us. First, and the popular choice among many, is former first lady Michelle Obama, who not only was the only Democrat to lead Trump in a post-debate poll conducted last week, she trounced him 50%-39%. Sure, Obama has repeatedly said she’d never run for POTUS, but then again Texas A&M didn’t think their baseball coach was taking a job at Texas last month until he did. You never say never in politics, and if people around Trump are smart they’ll be prepping him for an Obama run. She’s never held elected office and has all kinds of weaknesses that could be fleshed out in an ordinary campaign, but Republicans would only have four months in a truncated campaign that would certainly work in any newcomer’s favor, especially a Democrat’s.
The second possibility is Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore or someone in that vein. Diversity points? Check. Fresh face? Check. Young? Check. Articulate? Check. Qualified? Check. Moore is just the right mix of everything the Democrats want without coming across as a complete leftist nutjob (with emphasis on "complete"). People who have never heard of Moore would learn fast, and many center or left-of-center voters would quickly like him. Trump, or anyone for that matter, would have a difficult time against Moore, should he choose to run.
I know this column isn’t exactly “feel good,” and it’s not meant to be. Difficult times are ahead, no matter how you slice it. Our best bet is for Biden to remain in place and for Trump to eke out a win. That’s right, “eke.” Anyone who thinks Trump is going to win in a landslide, even against Biden, has their head in the sand. Let’s hope none of these nightmare scenarios become real life because if they do we’re in big trouble.