“Honestly, I’m still like 50/50 on whether or not Biden will be the nominee,” Tweeted The Daily Wire’s co-founder Jeremy Boreing. His sentiment is not unique. Despite Senator Bernie Sanders dropping out of the race yesterday, many are still skeptical that the Democratic Establishment is going to allow the gaffe-prone lifetime politician to be their standard-bearer in November.
Honestly, I'm still like 50/50 on whether or not Biden will be the nominee.
— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) April 8, 2020
Conventional wisdom tells us Biden will have a strong majority of delegates by the time the Democratic National Convention rolls around. That means he’ll be the nominee, right? In reality, the nomination process is convoluted enough that anything can happen… at least anything the Democratic National Committee and the unofficial Democratic Establishment wants to happen.
Biden has demonstrated real weakness when it comes to mental acuity. He just isn’t as sharp as he used to be, and to be fair, he wasn’t all that sharp before. It’s showing very clearly in interviews. Even as progressive mainstream media hosts throw him softballs, he has failed to connect in a meaningful manner. The best thing going for him is the coronavirus sucking all of the air out of newsrooms. If the spotlight was directly on him, unavoidable questions would be emerging.
If the DNC convinces him that he shouldn’t move forward with his campaign, they can take drastic measures to open up delegates at the convention once he drops out. A simple majority vote by DNC member delegates is all that would be required to call for an emergency delegate release, and a Biden campaign exit ahead of the convention would certainly prompt that. In that scenario, the race would be wide open and the 3,979 delegates would decide who to nominate.
Of course, this would only be done if the DNC had someone groomed and prepared to take the nomination and run with it into the general election. There are four names that makes sense. Okay, so none of them really make “sense,” but from the DNC’s perspective they just might. Here they are in order of who I believe is most- to least-likely:
- NY Governor Andrew Cuomo: He has been a propped-up “star” through the coronavirus crisis, though his star-power has faded in recent days. Still, a recent “Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen” indicates he’s the Democrat who has demonstrated the best leadership during the coronavirus crisis.
- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: I know what you’re thinking. Why would the DNC replace an old, failed presidential candidate with another old, failed presidential candidate? Unfortunately for them, the Clintons still have plenty of powerful allies among the Democratic Establishment. Whether they’re allies through affection or blackmail is irrelevant. The Clintons still pull strings, and this may be the last one they get to pull unless Chelsea gets ambitious.
- CA Governor Gavin Newsom: The radical progressive on the west coast may not have polled as well as his New York counterpart, but things have been changing recently. Newsom is getting tons of good press as focus shifts from failures in New York to apparent coronavirus hope in the west. The only reason he’s not higher on the list is because his record fails under scrutiny. Have you seen what happened in San Francisco under his reign?
- Former First Lady Michelle Obama: She’s the wildcard. If she ends up being the nominee in a House of Cards-esque switcheroo, it will be because that was the plan from the start. She has unequivocally downplayed all calls for her to run. That would make her swooping in to save the day a heartwarming story to be told for the ages despite the likelihood that if it happens, it was always going to happen.
There’s a major risk in doing this. Bernie Bros are already vowing to sit our the general election or even vote for President Trump. If Biden drops out, they will demand that Sanders be his replacement nominee. When that doesn’t happen—and it won’t—the Socialist Revolution will begin. They will disavow the party that only wanted them for their general election votes. We should even expect violence around the convention if Sanders is robbed for a third time in four years.
Republicans would be wise to keep their anti-Biden powder dry until his nomination is official. Burning him down now will only encourage the DNC to replace him. As fun as it would be to go after Hillary Clinton for another culminating session, Biden is the candidate we want to take on President Trump. He’s a known entity even if he doesn’t always known where he is at any given moment, and that’s the point.
Last month, President Trump noted Cuomo would be a better candidate than Biden. Clinton has her challenges, but she’s much less prone to gaffes. Newsom would have the media on his side to protect him from his terrible record. As for Obama, she may be the biggest challenge of them all to President Trump, though we’ve never seen her as a candidate.
Standard operating procedure dictates we’re supposed to go after the nominee the moment he’s determined. But Joe Biden hasn’t won the nomination yet. The fat lady hasn’t sung and Biden wouldn’t recognize the song if he heard it.
Image Source: Gage Skidmore
