Liberals must really be afraid about the upcoming 2022 and 2024 elections because some looney toon ideas are tumbling out. First, we have this cockamamie Hillary 2024 war cry that's not going to happen. She's still unlikable. She is still a two-time loser. The progressive left will have nothing to do with her anymore. We're in a "No more Bushes, no more Clintons" era of American politics.
So, what other ideas are being floated? Oh, that Joe Biden and Liz Cheney can run on a presidential ticket in 2024. Yeah, you read that right. Biden-Cheney 2024—is this the "West Wing"? Because only in an overly idealistic and warped political universe could that ever exist. The New York Times's Thomas Friedman floated this idea, based on the Israeli election system:
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.
In June, after an utterly wild period in which Israel held four national elections over two years and kept failing to produce a stable governing majority, the lambs there actually lay down with the lions.
Key Israeli politicians swallowed their pride, softened policy edges and came together for a four-year national unity government — led by rightist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and left-of-center Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. (They are to switch places after two years.) And for the first time, an Israeli Arab party, the Islamist organization Raam, played a vital role in cementing an Israeli coalition.
What forced everyone’s hand? A broad agreement that Israeli politics was being held hostage by then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who resisted putting together any government that he would not lead, apparently because, if he didn’t lead, he could lose his chance at some kind of immunity from prosecution on multiple corruption charges that could lead to prison.
Sound familiar?
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Yeah, it does—and the charges against BiBi, like those lobbed at Trump, were weak sauce. Israel did it so should America. Why should we? Who cares? Who cares if another country does something better? That's good for that country. Not everything that's imported is good. Also, Israel's government is quite different. You already know this. Its election system is also different. It's designed so that no one party can clinch an outright majority. Its proportional allocation of seats in the Knesset means there will always be some form of a coalition government. That's fine. I just don't see how that's applicable here. First, using Israel as an example for anything is anathema to the left. They hate Israel. The Democratic Party has an underreported anti-Semitism problem, so easy with using Israel as an example of how to save the country.
Also, and this is more to the point, who in their mind right now thinks that super-unpopular Joe Biden's 2024 chances would be buoyed by having a Cheney on the ticket? If anything, it would animate the GOP base to vote against it and motivate hardcore liberals to stay home. The Cheney family is the Galactic Empire to liberals. The former VP is Darth Vader, remember? What is going on here? Are liberals worried that they have zero depth in the presidential pool where serial losses seem to be projected? Maybe. The 2020 pool is loaded with losers, but here's the passage that caught my eye as well. It was buried in the piece:
Could this play come to Broadway? I asked Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” after he presented some similar ideas last week to my colleague David Leonhardt.
America is facing an existential moment, Levitsky told me, noting that the Republican Party has shown that it isn’t committed any longer to playing by democratic rules, leaving the United States uniquely threatened among Western democracies.
That all means two things, he continued. First, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. must never be able to retake the White House. Since Trump has made embracing the Big Lie — that the 2020 election was a fraud — a prerequisite for being in the Trump G.O.P., his entire cabinet most likely would be people who denied, or worked to overturn, Biden’s election victory. There is no reason to believe they would cede power the next time.
Ah yes—they just had to get in the "if the GOP wins, we're all going to die" line. If the GOP wins, it's the end of America. It's the same old playbook. While the GOP is focused on fixing the nation's problems, the Democrats are still obsessed with Trump, 2016, and this little January 6 riot that no one cares about. I think I can see who is going to win this year's election.
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