Wanted: 2028 Democratic Presidential Nominee. No Women Need Apply.

I'm going to blunt and come right out and say it: The United States will not have a female President in our lifetimes.  That includes babies born today who live to be a hundred.

We need a white male Democratic presidential nominee.  Preferably a Protestant.

As a Catholic who voted for Kamala Harris, I am embarrassed by this statement, but I stand by it.  The presidential election of 2024 definitively proved that a woman can't get elected President of the United States.  Donald Trump is the second worst major-party presidential nominee of all time, surpassed only by himself when he was nominated by the Republicans in 2024 after the GOP nominated him in 2016 and 2020.  He made it clear that would govern as a fascist dictator during the 2024 campaign.  Yet when it came to a choice between a female presidential nominee - and a black female presidential nominee at that - and Donald Trump, the nation chose Donald Trump.  He won every demographic except for two - black women and white men married to black women - while many Democrats stayed home.

And when the Democrats ran a white woman - who was also a Methodist - in 2016, Trump defeated her too. 

Two highly qualified women lost to a megalomaniac con artist.  I'm sorry, but in this case, two strikes is out.

Democrats who once celebrated the fact that a black woman and an Italian-American woman sat behind President Joe Biden at presidential speeches to Congress in 2021 and 2022 have to realize that we now have two white men with Anglo-Saxon names sitting behind a lapsed-Protestant President of German and Scottish origin because the Democrats have a problem reading the room when they nominate presidential candidates.  Kamala Harris lost not just because she couldn't communicate with voters - or at least she couldn't communicate with voters once the consultants took over.  She lost because too many voters - including many black and Puerto Rican men - tried to picture Harris in the White House and just couldn't bring themselves to see it.  Democrats love nominating female candidates for President because they want to make a statement.  Statement made.  Now we have the National Guard occupying Los Angeles like the Wehrmacht goose-stepping through Paris. 

So, assuming we get to have a presidential election in 2028 in which there is more than one candidate and neither of those candidates are named Donald Trump (because if one of them is, it means that the Constitution has been terminated and the election is rigged), Democrats have to ask themselves this: Do they want to make a statement, or do they want to win?

So forget about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, and especially New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand (who currently runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - oh, yeah, that'll help the party win back the Senate in 2026!) as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028.  And most definitely forget about Kamala Harris - Democrats don't rerun failed nominees of the past.  

Also, forget running another black man - many white voters think Barack Obama is one black President enough for awhile.  So that rules out Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, and besides, the failed presidential ambitions of his two predecessors have proven once and for all that governors of Maryland do not get elected President.  Vice President, yes (regrettably; I'm just old enough to remember Spiro Agnew).  President, no.  

And not even every white man in the Democratic Party is right for the 2028 presidential nomination.  Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania? Jewish.  Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts?  Jewish.  Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois?  Jewish, and also so squat, large and heavy-set, you could show a widescreen movie on his back.  He doesn't look like a President.  No Jews.  No Orthodox Christians either, least of all Greek Orthodox, because Greek-Americans, as Michael Dukakis proved, can't get elected President.  Vice President, yes (I'll cite the late and unlamented Spiro Agnew again).  President, no.

Also, no Catholics.  John F. Kennedy faced accusations in 1960 that he would bow to the Vatican.  John Kerry lost in 2004 because it was feared that he wouldn't bow to the Vatican (then under a Curia more conservative than the Republican Party).  Now that we have an American pope who's so woke he's almost a Unitarian, there are fears once again that a Catholic President would bow to the Vatican.  We need a white male Protestant, one with executive experience (sorry, Chris Murphy) as a governor.

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky?

Andy Beshear.

But then, as I am a secessionist who believes that New Jersey should leave the Union and form a new country with five or more of the other Eastern states north of the 36°30′ parallel line or become a Canadian province, that's none of my business.  

America: The Nervous Breakdown Continues

The 2023 elections continued a winning streak for Democrats that began with Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory and continued with the midterm results of 2022.  Andy Beshear was re-elected governor of Kentucky, Democrats won both houses of Virginia's legislature and expanded their majorities in the houses of the New Jersey state legislature, and abortion rights were enshrined in the state constitution in Ohio.  Many people think the MAGA movement is in retreat at the polls.  Don't you believe it.

The Republicans still have the advantage going into 2024.  Forget the polls that show Trump ahead of Biden, and forget especially the greater number of polls that show Biden ahead of Trump, which Biden himself alluded in a testy exchange with a "reporter" from Fox "News."   Here are the basic reasons why 2024 is still in tap to be a Republican year:

• Democrats face strong headwinds to keep their Senate majority.
• U.S. House districts are still gerrymandered. 
• Many voter-suppression laws remain on the books.  
• Voter turnout in off-year elections is low and cannot be used as an effective barometer for midterm or presidential elections.
• The Electoral College can still negate the will of the people if they pick a Democratic President, as the 2016 election so clearly proved.
• Support for abortion rights in Republican states like Ohio do not automatically translate into support for Democratic candidates in statewide elections.

Change these conditions, and the Democratic Party's fortunes can improve.  But as such changes are not likely to happen, even the rosiest outlook on the economy might not save Biden this time.

And there's not just the threat of a third-party candidate playing the role of spoiler to help Trump.  There's the threat of four of them.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is now a leading choice among young voters, and his anti-Semitic and anti-vaccine comments haven't hurt him as an independent candidate.  His appeal among young people might actually hurt Biden.  Cornel West has quit as the Green Party presidential nominee and continued to run as an independent, while Jill Stein - yes, the same Jill Stein who was the Green Party presidential nominee in 2016 and failed to win a 5 percent minimum of the vote to qualify the Green Party for matching funds in the 2020 presidential election - is taking his place on the Green ticket.  And the No Labels movement, which has promised to run a bipartisan presidential/vice presidential ticket, might have a presidential nominee in waiting in the form of Joe Manchin.

The senior senator from West Virginia announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and plans to tour the country to listen to voters needs - an obvious precursor to a presidential run, and possible as the No Labels candidate.  To be fair, No Labels' director, former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, has said that No Labels will not field a presidential ticket if researching and polling show that such a ticket would help Trump, but there will still be at least three other presidential candidates on the ballot who could and probably will screw things up for Joe Biden.

At least.  There could be more candidates.  Some people are still talking about Oprah Winfrey for President, while others are talking about her as a vice presidential No Labels candidate.  And still, waiting in the wings, and being taken very seriously, even by esteemed newsmen such as CNN's Jake Tapper, is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Oh, honey, I think America is having a nervous breakdown like you wouldn't believe! 

Oh yeah, in Mississippi, Democrat Brandon Presley - a distant cousin of Elvis - lost his bid for the state's governorship to incumbent Republican Tate Reeves despite Reeves being tainted by scandal.  Brandon has just left the building.  Another Brandon is likely to leave the White House a year and change from now.

Kentucky Fried Trump

Donald Trump went to Kentucky to stump for incumbent Republican governor Matt Bevin and told Kentucky voters that he would be personally humiliated if Bevin lost to his Democratic opponent, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear (below). Kentuckians accepted the risk and elected Beshear by a narrow margin, disgusted with Bevin's attitude toward teachers and his efforts to stick it to Medicaid recipients with unrealistic work requirements.

Bevin is trying to contest the election and get the results overturned in his favor, but no one in the state Republican organization rally has the stomach for such a quixotic fight.  Beshear, son of former Democratic governor Steve Beshear, is preparing for his inauguration on December 10.

Beshear's victory provides an opportunity for Democrats . . . and a warning.  Beshear is a moderate who will be going into his new job having to work with a Republican legislature in Frankfort. He won because he's expected to provide effective, pragmatic governance - he doesn't have a mandate to purse a progressive agenda that would include, among other things, Medicare For All.  And in much of the rest of America, as in Kentucky, the only people who advocate Medicare For All are supporters of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, either of whom could get "the full McGovern" (after George McGovern, the Democratic senator from South Dakota who mistakenly equated disgust with Nixon in 1972 with an endorsement for an ultra-liberal agenda) as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.  More proof that, despite an unequal economy and overwhelming support for things like gun control and teachers' unions, we're not ready for another Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson.  Part of the reason for that is because Trump was elected to make sweeping changes, and the changes he's made have set us so far back from where we were in 2016 that Americans can't stomach another massive change in either ideological direction. We were ready for a progressive President in 2016.  Not now.  Not any more.  We have to get back to where we were before Trump took office.  Democrats will do better in presidential and down-ballot elections in 2020 if they nominate left-of center candidates, but not if they nominate left-of-center candidates with the "center" part.

Don't believe me?  Consider what just happened in heavily Democratic New Jersey, where we have a very liberal governor.  Democrats kept their majority in the Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature, but still lost three seats, while the Republicans won a Democratic state Senate seat in a special election.   And the new GOP senator-elect said that his victory "shows that good can triumph over evil."

Wonder if Governor Murphy will get the, umm, message?