Well, also because he is an entitled douchebag . I mean never mind the arrogant, tone-deaf French Laundry bullshit - an entirely self-inflicted wound. This is also a guy who cheated on his first wife with the wife of his campaign manager and one his best friends, breaking up both marriages. I mean, c’mon Newsom.
I’ve voted for Newsom before and very recently and it is quite likely I’ll be in a position to do so again and probably will again. He is a dedicated, skilled and surprisingly fearless politician whose political values align closer to mine than anyone he has run against for state office. Progressives nationwide owe a great deal of debt to him for triggering the process by which a measure of marriage equality finally became reality.
But he does occasionally acts like a rich asshole and sticks his foot in it.
I’m pretty certain that if Biden were replaced by Newsom the GOP / RNC / MAGAWorld would unleash a total destruction smear campaign that they probably have cued up and ready to go. Don’t forget that Newsom’s ex-wife is one of the biggest and most prominent MAGA trolls out there.
Michelle isn’t running and there’s IMO no particular reason to want her to, for reasons others have already covered. But I see on the betting sites she is only a 9-1 underdog to become the next President, suggesting that bettors actually think she has a 10% chance of being elected. Other people who clearly aren’t going to be elected in 2024 (Hillary, Bernie, Haley, Newsome, et al) are also being given nontrivial chances. My take-home is that I need to open an election betting website, as clearly morons are lining up to give money away to people in that industry.
OTOH, those same people also think that Chicago is a corrupt, poverty-ridden woke hellhole overrun by gang violence and predatory drag queens. If Obama could overcome that, a good California politician should be able to as well(I make no judgment on whether Newsome might be that politician).
Adam Schiff is presumably going to be the next Senator from California. He has a strong record after more than 20 years in Congress. He led the first Trump impeachment. He was the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He gets regular publicity exposing the idiocy of his Republican colleagues. He lacks the asshole personality that dooms Newsom. I would expect that as a sitting Senator he would likely make a run for the Presidency and have good possibilities. Being from California would be a plus in the primaries.
Two big negatives, though. He’ll be 68 in 2028, which probably will be seen as too old. And he’s Jewish. I’m dismissing women because of American sexism, and I’d say the same of any Jewish candidate because of anti-semitism. I’d ecstatically be willing to be proven wrong on any of these predictions, however.
Obama didn’t run Chicago or Illinois. Being an executive is a different animal. It’s why a solid blue state like mine will never (at least in my lifetime) vote in a republican senator or go Rep for President but might still vote in a republican governor. The executive gets all the blame for the bad and perceived bad things that happen. A senator can rightfully say he had nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately Schiff pretty much lacks any personality. Politics junkies (such as most of those posting here, including myself) like him for his intelligence. But the general voting public will look at him and see an empty suit.
I think you’re right about this barrier (and I, too, would love to be proven wrong about it).
As for Michelle Obama: I agree with all who’ve said she doesn’t want to run.
But in the scenario of Biden being unavailable, for whatever reason, I think she would at least consider it—just to save the nation from Trump 2.0. She’s smart enough to know what a dire outcome that would be, and might be willing to sacrifice her own comfort to head it off.
ETA: Yes, the afore-mentioned sexism of many voters–many Democratic and independent voters, which is what would matter here–wouldn’t work in Michelle O’s favor. However, if she were to run, many otherwise sexist voters could rationalize a vote for her under the theory that it’s her husband who would ‘really’ be making the decisions.
Ugly, but likely true. And if it keeps Trump from power…
Barack also couldn’t stop smoking, and that ages you. But yeah- the stress is terrible.
She is 60 now. If Biden lives to be 100…
Michelle is super popular, and would get votes as a veep. But she doesnt want it.
She might be talked into a Cabinet seat, maybe Education, but…
Yeah, I have no major issue with her.
Of course.
No, I dont want anyone younger than late 50’s-60’s.
This is quite false. Harris does fairly well in polling.
Well, there’s a tiny change Joes dies, but other than that, its a done deal. They wont pull any “shenanigans”.
Right, Biden beats trump. He already has, and he is the best polling to do so.
Polling says you are wrong.
Yeah, if JFK rose from the grave or something. Oh wait, he’d be “too old”. A lot of Indys and youth voters were kinda hoping for another Obama to show up out of nowhere, but it didnt happen. There is no one waiting in the wings who could beat trump. The top candidate other than Biden or Harris is Newsom, and the pols say he’d lose badly vs trump.
Yes. But you actually have to sign up for it. Some people gambled- and lost.
No “might” about it.
Kaiser, one of the biggest is a Not for profit. So is BlueShield.
All that is true. But she doesnt want the job.
Yep. Wont and cant work
Giving trump a clear and easy win.
If someone wants Biden to drop out, that means they want trump to win. Because that is what will occur.
Nope. I mean unless you call a mild stutter since he was a little boy a “mental fitness issue”.
While true, they will do that at any Dem candidate. Think what they could do vs Mayor Pete for example.
No. That’s kinda ageist. I want someone who is distinguished. Late 50’s- 60’s. Yeah, maybe 77 is not the best age, but it all depends on the candidate.
Impossible, unless Biden withdraws or dies.
and if the DNC tried it, trump would win in a landslide. Is that what you want?
None of those vote Blue anyway.
Hardly. Too old for what? Full contact football? Yeah, there the kremlin and others are trying to get youth and Indy voters to stay home or vote 3rd party as “too old”, but its not a real worry., not for 68 anyway.
Almost every voting American has an opinion about Biden. That’s why Biden’s numbers in polls meant something, even last year. But Newsom is in another universe, polling wise. He has much lower name recognition. And even someone who reads the papers a lot, and has heard of him (me), does not necessarily have an opinion regarding him.
As soon as the early primary election filling deadlines past, it was too late for Joe to drop out. End of that story. But whatever happens, I do not think either party is set to choose a strong nominee this cycle.
Is there a whiff of Democratic Party defeatism in my last paragraph? Could be. One of the earlier posters said we shouldn’t be defeatist, but I didn’t catch why.
Yet again why should anyone be looking hopefully to Michelle Obama, specifically, to save the nation? And frankly this goes back even to before Trump II Orange Boogaloo was something imminent. Some Twitter wags were already trying to cast her as the Next Hillary all the way back in 2016. Though some of those comments surely were just mere musings or transient reactions, that sort of thing takes on a life of its own in this world.
Really, after Trump and Biden, a healthy 68 may seem a breath of fresh air. One year younger than Reagan when he got elected.
I continue to believe that a generational change will be coming, in the same way that Kennedy, 43, and Nixon, 47, were the candidates after Eisenhower.
Gen X will probably get skipped over - just as they whine about so much these days - and Millennial candidates will be seen as fresh new faces. The oldest will be 48 in 2028, just older than Kennedy and Nixon were in 1960. Obama was 48 and Clinton was 46. A young Gen Xer might slip in - 50 isn’t far off from 48 - but not older.
I also continue to believe we will have a functioning democracy in 2028, so take any of my predictions with a grain of Ozempic.
I’m not sure that anyone sees Michelle O as “saving the nation”. I suspect they see her as “being able to motivate people to vote who might otherwise stay home.” Which is rather different, though obviously crucial.
Keeping Donny the Dimwitted Fascist out of office might well qualify as “saving the nation” though not in the sense of Having Revolutionary Ideas or Being Best At Getting Policies Passed or any other ‘only she can do it’ sense. It’s really all about November 5.
Michelle Obama might well bring out voters who wouldn’t vote, otherwise, due to her–well, to be blunt, due to her being black. And being a black person with a fairly unassailable reputation on top of it. Right-wingers will revile her but not based on anything they can say out loud. They might say ‘she lacks legislative and executive experience’ which is certainly true, but it’s not as though she has no relevant experience. And her adherents could just as rightly say that she is smart enough to appoint good advisors (even apart from the guy sleeping in the same room).
In short: she’s not easily vilified, she would bring out a certain number of voters who wouldn’t otherwise vote, and she has huge name recognition. These are important qualifying traits for being elected, even if not for actually handling the Presidency. But she’d likely do just fine at that, too.
And which if so reveals a terrible failure at majority-building on the part of the Democratic Party, of Liberals, of Moderates and of Sane Conservatives. Between them all they should have a dozen people who could do that.
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I know.
I just find it depressing that I may not live to see an election where just being the best qualified will be the deciding factor.
You left out the part where she’s secretly a transwoman whose birth name was Michael and her kids are kidnap victims who’ve been brainwashed and the Deep State paired her with Barack to control and blackmail him by threatening to expose his gayness and drug addiction and how she’s force-feeding awful cafeteria food to schoolchildren in order to prepare them for a future where only the liberal elites will be allowed to have real food and Real Americans will be forced to subsist off tightly rationed fake meat grown in peach tree dishes when they’re not eating bugs. /s
But there’s nothing in that list—which I agree would be employed by the GOP—that would influence independent voters. It would be greeted with delight by the MAGAs, but by no one else.
In contrast, the attacks on Hillary Clinton did convince a lot of non-MAGA voters—particularly given the assist Comey gave the GOP, which lent solid credibility to what was, in the end, pretty close to being a nothing-burger.*
So far as any of us are aware now, there’s nothing that could be attached to Michelle other than the ‘she’s a man’-style conspiracy theories and outright racism. And those types of claims won’t gain traction with non-MAGA voters.
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*It’s true that HC shouldn’t have been running a private server. But the idea that she compromised national security is fairly laughable when we look at what Donny has gotten up to.
. I mean never mind the arrogant, tone-deaf French Laundry bullshit - an entirely self-inflicted wound. This is also a guy who cheated on his first wife with the wife of his campaign manager and one his best friends, breaking up both marriages. I mean, c’mon Newsom.