I’ll give Pence a crumb of credit-he actually went to Ukraine and met with Zelenskyy. Hopefully Zelenskyy knows that the meeting means nothing and Pence can’t help him at all, but it’s a headline-grabbing gesture, anyway. " In the latest NBC News national poll, 52% of GOP primary voters said they would be less likely to back a candidate who supports sending more funding and weapons to Ukraine, while just 28% said they would be more likely."
So if he somehow gets elected, does he flip-flop? And equally unlikely-if Pence won, would he choose Trump as VP?
Y’know what, just to have anyone else win the primary and then say “oh but of course I would never even think of asking Mr. Trump to take a step down”. Let Donald angrily post about how he would refuse if asked and who does this guy think he is and the guy only got elected because the MAGAs beleved he was on his side…
You know you’re getting old when you are old enough to be the parent of 3 presidential candidates, and while I would have been a mother of 17 or 18, I am indeed old enough to be the mother of Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, and Eric Swalwell, who all tossed their hats in the ring in 2016. (wow, was it that long ago?)
The best way to practice for running for president is … running for president. Both in terms of how to behave as a candidate, and how to build and operate a campaign organization. Those things aren’t exactly off-the-shelf items you just buy & switch on.
Waiting until you’re optimally positioned for your once-in-a-lifetime grab at the brass ring is not the way to minimize avoidable errors.
If nothing else, one of the ways you become widely acknowledged as being well positioned for the brass ring is by coming close a time or two, and doing so early enough in your life that you have more runs left before being elderly. It’s a positive feedback loop. That positive feedback loop doesn’t work for perpetual no-hopers, but there’s a fuzzy gray middle between “no hope ever” and “no hope yet”. Folks enter that political centrifuge hoping to be fractionated into group 2, not group 1.
Separately to the above, but alongside it we should consider timing …
About the best way to position oneself is to run and end as a near also-ran in the cycle just before your party is likely to prevail simply based on the periodic swapping of presidential parties. And be the right age when this happens.
If the Ds win this time it’s implausible they will win in 2028 also. It’s likely that Traitorous Ex-president DJT will not be a factor in 2028; either too old, too dead, or too convicted. So now is the time for the various [plausible wannabes but not while TEpDJT is still in the room] to be advancing their pawns towards promotion.
All the above analysis assumes that going forward we continue to have a real two-party system, a non-fascist government, a non-party-controlled SCOTUS, etc. If not, well … in a world with no rules it’s impossible to predict much except chaos, impunity, and criminality.
I’m of the belief that most Republican campaigns are essentially grifting operations, with the lion’s share of money raised going to fundraising and “consulting” firms owned by political cronies.
Trump raised this to an art form and managed to funnel lots of money to his businesses as well, but I’m sure other candidates are playing the same game,
Here’s an old article on the scam.