the mainstream press seems to be assuming president biden won’t run, while i’m assuming he will. and the conventional wisdom of the ages is that you don’t challenge an incumbent president of your own party; you don’t force them to defend in a primary because primaries are bruising and everyone emerges from them damaged.
but how is conventional wisdom helping anyone in politics in 2022 (let alone 2023 and 2024)? if there’s one thing we know about the man who would be despot it’s that he does whatever he wants. conventional wisdom did not suggest that a man who’s never held political office has been married several times and brags about attacking women would get elected president.
so why should president biden allow the idea that he’s “too old” or “too unpopular” keep him from running? i’m perfectly comfortable with conventional wisdom keeping vice president kamala harris and transportation secretary pete buttigieg from running against biden but why shouldn’t former ohio senator sherrod brown challenge him?
if president biden runs and no one challenges him, that means that we’ll hear about nothing but florida governor ron desantis and maybe if we’re lucky former wyoming congresswoman liz cheney duking it out with you know who. is that good for the rest of us if that’s the only party or set of beliefs we’re hearing about?
i’m pleasantly surprised and relatively pleased with the job that president biden has done. because biden has embraced and championed an unexpectedly large amount of his own platform (taxing the rich for a green economy, forgiving student loans, universal childcare, health care for all) senator bernie sanders (himself unconventional) would be unlikely to challenge biden for president. biden has not succeeded with all of his platform by any means, but through no lack of trying.
still, i’d love to see sherrod brown run to biden’s left and keep that energy going. brown shares most of bernie’s beliefs but is more palatable and electable perhaps than bernie (it remains to be seen, that was said of senator elizabeth warren, but with bernie out of the race, it could be different). it might even be interesting for someone to run to biden’s right (i don’t know who that would be).
if someone like brown (and i’m not sure there is someone else like brown, maybe warren i guess but i don’t like her chances given her performance in 2020 and i’d rather only have one strong socialist progressive in the mix) runs hard from biden’s left it accomplishes multiple purposes:
1) it forces the democratic party to define who it is other than anti-you know who.
2) people who think biden went too far left can feel better about him;
3) assuming biden gets re-elected president it makes him stay or even tack further left;
4) it competes energetically with the madness going on in the other party.
it also strikes me that whatever happens in this year’s midterm elections, it’s a lock that we’ll need to work hard to improve progressive representation in congress in 2024. having a democratic primary would likely bring out more democratic voters to the polls in the primaries, including more progressive voters who could push for (as minnesota paul wellstone used to say) “the democratic wing of the democratic party” to be our standard bearers in the fall.
so that’s my thinking at this early point (not that early because they’ll start running next year). what do you think?
Go Biden