As many that read these pages are aware, we have family members based in Brazil.  We have visited the nation twice over the last several years and taken a particular interest in its affairs.  The country dominates South America, ranking 7^th in the world in population and possessing the globe’s 12^th largest economy.  The Brazilians are a warm, sensual, creative people and their land is both bountiful and beautiful.  Like the United States, Brazil was first claimed a colony by a European power – in its case, Portugal (making it the only South American nation whose native language is Portuguese rather than Spanish) – and, like the United States, has a history marred by African slavery.  Unlike the United States, its democratic roots are surprisingly short.  After being governed through the centuries by monarchy or military dictatorship with sporadic stabs at democracy, Brazil’s true democratic system of government only took hold in the 1970s.

Current rightist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, in the aftermath of corruption scandals which engulfed then-President Dilma Rousseff.  Mr. Bolsonaro has been called “the Trump of the Tropics.”  His COVID denials and their devastating effect on his people, combined with his policies facilitating deforestation (he would call it, “development”) of the Amazon jungle so crucial to combat Climate Change, have caused Americans to take greater note of Brazilian issues and politics than would otherwise have been the case.  His effective use of social media was core to his election victory, and thereafter pivotal in building an even deeper loyalty among his followers after he took office.  He has consistently maintained a flagrant disdain for those who oppose him, engendering an antipathy in his adversaries corresponding to the allegiance of his adherents.

Perhaps because of the relatively short tenure of true democracy in Brazil, the merits of the system are a subject of genuine debate among Brazilians.  When we visited this past summer, a Rio de Janeiro paper reported upon a poll indicating that a solid – but not overwhelming – majority of citizens favored democracy over autocracy, while at the same time a similarly-sized majority believed that the country would run more efficiently under autocracy than it did under democracy.  

As all who care are aware, Brazil has just emerged from a bitterly-partisan presidential election in which Mr. Bolsonaro was defeated by former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by a margin of slightly less than 2% of 120 million votes cast.  Mr. Bolsonaro, who before the election consistently criticized the Brazilian electronic voting system that impartial experts find above material reproach, declared in August that he would only accept the outcome of his contest against Mr. da Silva if the vote was “clean and transparent,” and that he saw only three alternatives for his future:  “being arrested, killed or victory.”

Earlier this week, almost two days after Brazilian election officials announced Mr. da Silva’s victory, Mr. Bolsonaro (through an aide) acknowledged his defeat and indicated that he would facilitate the transition to Mr. da Silva.  Despite this acknowledgement, unrest currently continues among Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters.

There was no notion of this post on the docket.  I was prompted to enter it by a November 2^nd Wall Street Journal report of Mr. Bolsonaro’s concession:  “… [E]nding a tense silence of 45 hours in which he had refused to acknowledge the results even as his allies urged him to do so. … On Tuesday, the governor of São Paulo state … became one of the latest to call for the president to concede.  ‘The elections are over, we live in a democracy,’ he told reporters. … Mr. Bolsonaro’s [de facto concession] came as politicians called on him to acknowledge the outcome to help tame protests … [Emphasis Added].”

One can reasonably surmise that during the “tense … 45 hours” described by the Journal, Mr. Bolsonaro and his sons (his closest aides) were soliciting the assistance of military and political allies across Brazil to contest Mr. da Silva’s electoral victory.  If such was indeed the case, it is clear that not enough of these followers were willing to engage in an attempt to overturn what they knew was a valid election result to keep Mr. Bolsonaro in power.  I suspect that Mr. Bolsonaro conceded not because he wanted to, but because he had no choice.      

The Journal report made me reflect what might have been here, in 2020.  The vote totals of the state presidential races considered too close to call on Election Night were announced within a week after the election, a determinative number in favor President Joe Biden.  It’s all good – and indeed, vital to our system of government – to respect the legal process; even I initially nodded at Republican bromides asserting that Mr. Trump had the right to contest his defeats in court.  That said, professional politicians know their states.  Republican former WI Gov. Scott Walker, both the most savvy and virulently-partisan Wisconsin politician of his generation, made clear via tweet within hours after Wisconsin results were announced – before he or others grasped that then-President Donald Trump would simply choose to disregard facts in his quest to retain power — that although the contest was close, Mr. Biden had won Wisconsin.  Most if not all of the Republican party leaders and officials in each of the states narrowly won by Mr. Biden undoubtedly understood early on that that Mr. Trump’s challenges would have no appreciable effect on the election’s outcome.  They didn’t need to wait for their states’ respective formal election certifications or Congress’ January 6^th formal counting of the Electoral College votes to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory.  Had they and right-wing propagandists such as Fox News done what Mr. Bolsonaro’s political allies have done – as soon as the result was objectively clear even if avenues for futile legal challenges remained, called in chorus upon Mr. Trump to concede and gracefully lay the ground for his opponent’s succession – it seems, at least to me, that despite his inevitable subsequent thrashing, Mr. Trump would have been politically hobbled, surrounded by a small cabal insufficient to sow the level of cancerous doubt and seditious impulse which we now confront.

But they didn’t have the … guts.  (You know that wasn’t the word I was thinking as I typed this, or you were thinking as you read it.)  Despite over two centuries of American experience, they didn’t have the love and respect for democracy shown by officials in a South American nation with scant experience in true self-government.

Brazilians have a wry saying about their country: “Brazil is the future, and it always will be.”  Maybe so; but right now, the future of its democracy seems brighter than ours.

As all who care are aware, President Joe Biden announced on August 24^th that his Administration was canceling $10,000 in student loan debt for those earning less than $125,000 per year, and another $10,000 in such debt for those who had received Pell grants for low-income students.

In a post in May of 2021, I noted that one could sympathize both with those seeking relief from crippling higher education debt and with the millions of others who have either paid off or are paying off their loans and accordingly might resent any loan forgiveness measure then being urged by some Democrats.  Because the mountain of outstanding student debt was what I termed in that note, “a millstone around the neck of our future economic growth,” I ventured at that time that forgiving much if not all of such debt seemed a means to spur long-term economic growth that would benefit both those whose loans were forgiven and those who paid off their loans.  Although the high levels of inflation we are now experiencing didn’t occur to me – an oversight, given our last 40 years’ experience, that might be excused – I failed to take into account that such a debt-forgiveness measure would do nothing to curb rising college education costs or, more importantly, at least theoretically (since neither party’s officeholders seem to care any longer about our burgeoning national debt) add notably to the federal debt borne by all taxpayers, including those who perhaps for financial reasons didn’t go to college or managed to avoid incurring college loan debt.

What follows is the verbatim text of an email I received from a close friend – one sympathetic to the Biden Administration – the day after the decision was announced.  He termed it a “Rant.”  I received his permission to publish his email here.  Having considered the issue from more angles than I did last year, I associate myself with his remarks  😉 . 

“I think the student loan forgiveness policy is an awful decision.  $600-800B deficit spending with no revenue offsets.  Questionable legal authority tied to “emergency” powers in the Heroes Act (of all things!) that stretches the limits of presidential authority to a new breaking point.  It can only be viewed as inflationary at a time when we had just been making some progress on turning the corner on an inflation crisis and the power of the issue was starting to wane for the midterm elections.  It plays right into MAGA hands as it can be painted as elitist, making a direct “payment” to the college-educated at a time when the Democratic party is struggling to retain its historical blue-collar base.  Those who pursued trades occupations should be rightly insulted.  (See  https://www.newsweek.com/mike-rowe-slams-student-debt-forgiveness-1555317.)   It’s anathema to American Families taking accountability for their decisions and “educating” their children about the costs and payoffs of attending various colleges or other post-secondary learning or experiences.  Provides more red meat for the Republicans to take away Democratic momentum driven by the Roe decision.   A clear instance of caving to or at least mollifying far left progressives (who will not be pleased as it didn’t go far enough).  

The mid-term election fortunes were shifting. The Roe issue was “winning” over inflation.  Few if any candidates were asking for direct participation from Biden/the White House.  I can only conclude that this is an issue where Biden let his legacy and ego get the better of him.” 

Although some pundits are opining that the Administration action will help Democrats in this fall’s elections, I share our friend’s concern that Mr. Biden may have committed an unforced political blunder that will hurt his party’s prospects.  I know that we both hope that our fears prove unfounded.

[If one intends to review this post, but has not yet read Part I (which is below), I would start there.]

As many have observed in recent days, if U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney elects to launch a campaign for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination, she will bring formidable assets to what I would see as a political guerilla effort – her goal being to politically weaken former President Donald Trump for the November 2024 general presidential election, not to defeat him for the Republican nomination.  She has strong name recognition and positive renown among many of our citizens (if not the Trumplicans), a strong campaign financial position coupled with enviable fund raising opportunities which will enable her to persevere despite what will almost certainly be disappointing objective results on the primary circuit, her pick of the best Republican strategists repulsed by the Trumplican movement, and a lot of sympathetic media.  While these are vital to her effort, all are but tactical tools to fulfill her strategy.  Unlike virtually every other presidential campaign I’ve ever heard of — in which the candidate dreams, no matter how quixotically, of achieving the White House, and thus seeks to pick up delegates in all states — Ms. Cheney’s aim from the outset will be to sow enough doubt about Mr. Trump in the states that will decide the 2024 November presidential election (judging by 2020, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Nevada, Florida, Minnesota, and New Hampshire) to deny Mr. Trump the presidency.  As such, I would submit that the important figure in her recent Wyoming Republican primary loss was not her opponent’s total, or the margin by which she lost, but rather the 28% that voted for her.  (I think it’s tenable to pose that the cross-over Democratic votes she received substituted to some extent for the votes of Republican Cheney supporters who didn’t participate because they knew she was going to be soundly defeated.)  A recent NBC News poll found that 57% of Americans want the investigations into Mr. Trump to continue, a seemingly reasonable indicator that he has significant political weakness with the general electorate (although it would obviously be more meaningful to have snapshots of the voters’ attitudes toward the investigations in the respective pivotal Electoral College states).  In order to condition her supporters to what will be disappointing primary vote totals by traditional political standards, from the outset of her campaign she must consistently message that she does not expect to out-poll Mr. Trump in any primary.  If through her campaign she can persuade perhaps 15% of self-described Republicans (about half of the sample size of her primary support) and a good share of the conservative Independents in swing states that they cannot support Mr. Trump in the 2024 November election, I don’t think he can reclaim the presidency if the Democrats run a suitable candidate (this latter caveat the subject of a previous post).

Some suggest that it will be difficult for Ms. Cheney to mount a nationwide campaign because those state Republican organizations under Mr. Trump’s control will seek to keep her off their primary ballots.  This would only matter if she was in it to win it.  I’ll hazard that her guerilla effort gains more than it loses where she’s kept off the ballot and can straightforwardly claim that a state’s Republican apparatus has been “rigged” against her.

Some suggest that the National Republican Committee will go to any lengths to keep Ms. Cheney out of any debates with Mr. Trump.  While such a shutout is the only logical course for Mr. Trump to take — I think most observers would expect Ms. Cheney to score heavily — if he doesn’t debate, such a maneuver will nonetheless put him in a box he won’t like:  he won’t be able to escape the impression that he’s afraid to debate … a woman.  Recently, Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake actually lauded Mr. Trump’s “BDE.” (For those of you scoring at home, that’s “Big Dick Energy.”  Yes, really.)  What Ms. Cheney could do with an “Empty Chair” debate format in lieu of an exchange with Mr. Trump is tantalizing.  She could repeatedly point out that Mr. Trump was scared to face … a girl.  Right in front of our eyes, his BDE would … shrivel.  (I know, I know; I just couldn’t help myself.)  

Two final notes.  First, it is ironic that if Rep. Cheney actually won the Republican nomination – seemingly more than theoretically possible if she was facing not Mr. Trump himself but a field of Trump Wannabes, who would split the pro-Trump vote in the early primaries, perhaps enabling her to seize the nomination in a reverse of the strategy Mr. Trump himself used in 2016 – I think she’d have a much easier path to the presidency than Mr. Trump has.  Traditional Republicans are tribal – they’ve shown themselves in the Trump Era to be willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican mantle — and in the 2024 November election Ms. Cheney could probably compensate for the loss of Trumplican cultists with the votes of Independents and moderate Democrats grateful that she deposed Mr. Trump.

Second, as Mr. Trump continues to incite violence in a transparent attempt to avoid what now appears impending prosecution for a myriad of crimes, I wonder whether he realizes that if Ms. Cheney runs against him, and any of his supporters attempt to visit violence upon her, he will not be able to escape responsibility for the shock that would register in the minds of a determinative majority of Americans.  Even if he is able to stay out of jail, I think he would be finished politically, no matter whom the Democrats nominate for president.  Since he has no moral compass, hopefully he’ll realize that for his own good, he should immediately strongly speak out against violence toward Ms. Cheney if she mounts a presidential campaign against him.  I hope he will.  Since he’s emotionally a bad-seed preschooler, I realize he won’t.

When President Biden, a genuinely good man, assumed the presidency in January, 2021, I hoped that by his manner he could reintroduce some sanity and comity across most of our political spectrum.  Mr. Trump’s persistence in his Big Lie, the zealous gullibility of his supporters, and the traitorous discord sown over the last two years by Mr. Trump, his minions, and alt-right propagandists such as Fox News, have dashed such hopes.  Hoping for a gradual resolution of the toxicity inflamed by Mr. Trump hasn’t worked.  Now, the battle needs to be directly joined.  I see no one but Liz Cheney that can inject an antitoxin that will cleave the Republican Party and protect our republic.  She will obviously bide her time until 2023, to avoid providing Mr. Trump’s cohort the opportunity to cast an overt political taint on the work of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, for which she serves as Vice Chair.  I hope she will run, but she’s not my wife or daughter.  Given the physical dangers she will face if she mounts a campaign, I would fully understand if her husband, children, and parents hope that she doesn’t.

[Note:  the notions set forth in this post are ultimately based upon the perhaps questionable assumption that Trumplicans who have captured discretionary control of the electoral mechanisms in some swing states don’t deny the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee fairly-won Electoral College votes.]

What follows is largely cast on the presumption that former President Donald Trump will seek the 2024 Republican nomination for president.  At this juncture it seems overwhelmingly likely he will, and – perhaps to the surprise of those who know that I consider him and his acolytes a fascist cult – I hope he does. Trump Wannabes such as FL. Gov. Ron DeSantis are clearly seeking to exploit the resentment and unrest Mr. Trump has incited to their own political advantage, but such Wannabes, although potentially every bit as anti-democratic as Mr. Trump, would carry less baggage into a 2024 presidential election and thus, be harder for a Democrat to defeat; furthermore, even if a Wannabe was defeated, such might only serve to reinforce rather than diminish Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence.  I would submit that what we have seen over the last two years makes it clear that Mr. Trump himself must be defeated – he needs to be made a two-time loser — if we are going to start to excise the growing cancer in the American polity to which he has given license.

As all who care are aware, last week U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney lost the Republican primary to run as the party’s nominee for the Wyoming Congressional seat she now holds — to a Trump supplicant, by a 66.3% to 28.9% margin — and thus, will be leaving Congress at the end of this year.

Media commentators are now jumping over each other to declare that Ms. Cheney might run for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.  She has reportedly strongly hinted at a presidential campaign in interviews.  In January and May I speculated in these pages that she might mount such a presidential run, and upon the effect that such a campaign could have on the White House aspirations of Mr. Trump or, if Mr. Trump decided not to run, upon those of Trump Wannabes such as Mr. DeSantis.

First:  If Ms. Cheney declares for the presidency, she will, given the increasing tendency to violence fomented by Mr. Trump among his cult, be exposing herself to the most imminent physical danger of any presidential candidate at least as far back as U.S. MA Sen. Edward Kennedy’s 1980 campaign (Mr. Kennedy’s family and advisors then understandably feared the possibility that an unbalanced assailant might seek to replicate the assassinations of Mr. Kennedy’s brothers).  Such a campaign will require extraordinary physical courage.  If advising Ms. Cheney, I would therefore point out that she has strong reasons not to make a run:  foremost, her husband and five children.  I would also indicate what I am pretty sure she already knows:  she is probably the only person in America that has a real chance to bring about the political demise of Donald Trump.

Some pundits have suggested that Ms. Cheney might seek to confront Mr. Trump through a communications strategy rather than a political campaign.  If she is indeed willing to continue her battle with Mr. Trump, she should reject such a notion.  Think of the clever but largely ineffective work of The Lincoln Project.  It’s hard to see how any similar effort by Ms. Cheney – who, under such an approach, would be “yesterday’s news” – would be any more successful.

To command and maintain the media attention that an effective effort against Mr. Trump will require, Ms. Cheney needs to be “news,” which means that she must – to borrow a phrase from former President Richard Nixon – enter the Arena.  She must declare her candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.  I believe she knows this.  (If her goal is to keep Mr. Trump out of the White House, she cannot run as an Independent.  I am pretty sure that she and those around her must realize that such an Independent effort would ultimately siphon from the Democratic nominee the votes of those moderately-conservative voters uneasy with progressive policies who are nonetheless determined to vote against Mr. Trump; any split in the anti-Trump vote in November, 2024, will obviously enhance Mr. Trump’s chances to reclaim the presidency.)

Because Rep. Cheney has virtually no chance of securing the Republican nomination – of which I am also pretty confident that she is aware — I’ve heard more than one commentator accordingly declare that any campaign she would launch would be a “kamikaze mission.”  I disagree.  I would submit that her campaign from its very outset would be more accurately described as political guerrilla warfare – intended to weaken the enemy, not to defeat him outright.  The form such an effort might take will be addressed in Part II of this note.

[First, a qualification:  although I have heard legal analysts comment that the FBI’s recent search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate was not a “raid” because it was seemingly undertaken entirely according to lawful procedures, the word, “raid,” is nonetheless used at points in this note because it is significantly easer and shorter than the phrase, “a search conducted by the FBI pursuant to a warrant issued by a federal judge upon a finding of probable cause that evidence would be discovered leading to conviction of a crime.”  😉 ].

I suggested in an earlier post that in U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s place, what might cause me to refrain from bringing criminal charges against Mr. Trump – despite my beliefs that no one is above the law, and that there is cogent evidence that Mr. Trump is guilty of seditious conspiracy – was the practical problem of empaneling 12 open-minded jurors in an environment in which at least a third of Americans are in Mr. Trump’s cult.  I would feel – and strongly suspect that Mr. Garland feels – that for the good of the country, one cannot afford to bring criminal charges against Mr. Trump, and lose.

That said, my reluctance was expressed when considering and in the context of crimes that inevitably have a subjective element – and thus, the potential for Mr. Trump’s plausible deniability – including not only seditious conspiracy but crimes such as the instances of obstruction of justice described by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in Volume II of his report.

In apparently determining to first pursue Mr. Trump under the Presidential Records Act (the “PRA”), Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) team are seemingly being pretty tactical, but pragmatic.  They have perhaps chosen to start with an arguably relatively innocuous statute – at least as compared to the legion of other, potentially more momentous, charges for which there appears to be compelling evidence against Mr. Trump – because proving a PRA offense could be the most objective, and thus, the easiest to establish.  (That said, how harmless the offense might be will obviously ultimately depend on what, if any, material Mr. Trump might be proven to have illegally kept; more on this below.)  It’s up or down, black or white.  Mr. Trump either had illegally retained documents under his control at the time of the raid, or he didn’t.  Clearly, Mr. Garland – and the federal judge authorizing the Mar-A-Lago search warrant, based upon the DOJ affidavit presented in support of the warrant application – had a strong belief that he did.  If such records were on the Mar-A-Lago estate, presumably the FBI now has them.  Since negotiations regarding these records have reportedly gone on for months between Mr. Trump and federal authorities, it will seemingly be difficult for the former president to claim that he didn’t know that he had them (if he indeed did).  The DOJ perhaps considers the PRA the simplest vehicle to establish a straightforward violation with the potential for securing a relatively quick conviction.

Even so – and despite all the chortling by liberal media outlets – the obtaining of a search warrant and the execution of the attendant search doesn’t constitute an indictment, much less a conviction, of Mr. Trump.  Even if he is ultimately indicted and convicted, a fairly quick internet search of legal authority sets forth a legal view that such conviction would not, despite the PRA’s purported prohibition upon a perpetrator’s holding of federal office, prevent Mr. Trump from seeking and assuming the presidency because Congress doesn’t have the power to add hurdles to a citizen’s right to become president that are not set forth in the Constitution.

The ramifications of this week’s raid may ultimately be determined by what was retrieved.  If something truly significant was recovered, and can be publicized, such will seemingly have an impact upon Mr. Trump’s political fortunes as well as his personal freedom.  (I note with interest reports that Mr. Trump’s legal and media defenders – who for the most part probably have no better idea than anyone else what might have been recovered – are suggesting that the FBI might have “planted” evidence on Mr. Trump, laying the groundwork to enable them to sow doubt about any serious transgression in the minds of Mr. Trump’s credulous followers.)  On the other hand, if what Mr. Trump had in his possession merely amounts to a technical but inconsequential violation – what basketball fans call a “ticky-tack foul” – such could have little effect on Mr. Trump’s political aspirations or perhaps even generate sympathy for him among the moderately-conservative voter segments whose support he needs to reclaim the presidency. 

As Mr. Trump was fond of saying during his presidency:  We’ll see what happens.  Maybe this week’s raid will amount to something; perhaps it will amount to nothing.  However, and as many are aware, Al Capone was never convicted of murder, extortion, or bootlegging; he was ultimately brought low by a conviction for income tax evasion.  Perhaps Mr. Trump will suffer a similar fate due to an infraction far afield from the many, seemingly more significant, betrayals of our republic for which there is persuasive evidence of his guilt.

[Note:  this post is based on the perhaps questionable assumption that Trumplicans who have assumed discretionary control of the electoral mechanisms in some swing states don’t deny the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee fairly-won Electoral College votes.]

I would submit that each party has a two-word obstacle that it must finesse in order to win the White House in 2024.

The Republicans’ two-word problem is pretty obvious:  Donald Trump.  Given all of the opportunity we’ve had since 2015 to contemplate the former president’s psyche, I think it takes little insight to suggest that he is viscerally unable to relinquish the stage; he desperately fears being left behind, forgotten.  I may at some point have to concede that I was wrong, but I currently can’t believe that Mr. Trump won’t seek the Republican 2024 Presidential nomination.  If he wins the nomination, all of the animosities he stirs in those who oppose him, taken together with the political wounds he has seemingly suffered as a result of the hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (the “Committee”), plus all of the unease and weariness that would exist in conservative Independent and moderate Republican quarters at the prospect of having to again deal with him, make it seem to me that it will be difficult for him to defeat the right Democratic presidential candidate (more on that below) in enough swing states to reclaim the presidency.  On the other hand, if he loses the nomination, I would venture that Republicans are fantasizing if they think that Mr. Trump – who in defeat will almost certainly retain the diehard allegiance of at least one-third of the Republican base — will docilely accept his defeat and line up behind the nominee.  The former president will instead claim that every primary he lost was “rigged” or “stolen.”  He will loudly and continuously denounce the GOP nominee.  He will threaten to start his own party – and may follow through.  In short, he will stir up enough discontent and uncertainty that in swing areas, enough disgruntled Trumplicans may stay home to enable the right Democrat to win in the Electoral College – which is the only tally that matters.

[I deliberately pass over the debate as to whether Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for sedition.  While I personally consider Mr. Trump guilty of sedition based upon the evidence uncovered by the Committee (while recognizing, of course, that if obliged to sit on a jury judging Mr. Trump, I would have to steel my mind and soul to consider only the sufficiency of the evidence admitted in his criminal trial), I am against such prosecution not because of any worry that such will set a precedent for future political persecutions but because I consider it extremely doubtful that with at least a third of our citizens in Mr. Trump’s cult, any prosecutorial team will be able to persuade twelve jurors to find Mr. Trump guilty of sedition beyond a reasonable doubt.  The Biden Justice Department can’t, for the good of the country, afford to bring a case against Mr. Trump, and lose.]

The Democrats’ two-word problem is almost as obvious:  Kamala Harris.  While I consider President Joe Biden to have thus far done a good job overall – a discussion for a separate post – he is showing every bit of his approximately 80 years (even those that support him concede that he looks old).  Elections are about matchups; up against Mr. Trump, he might well win despite his advanced years — by simply running on a slogan, “Do you really want to go back to him?” – but against any other, inevitably more vital-appearing, Republican nominee, it’s difficult to conceive of him overcoming understandable reservations among Independents about his ability to serve out his term.  Accordingly, if he runs and retains Vice President Harris as his running mate, this will necessarily cause any open-minded voter to seriously consider whether she is qualified to be president.  My conclusion – not new to anyone who read a number of entries in these pages during the 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination process, and regrettably unchanged by anything I’ve seen in Ms. Harris’ performance as Vice President – is, she’s not.  My impression of Ms. Harris seems, crucially, to be shared by a number of our progressive Madison, WI friends.  If they have misgivings about her ability to conduct the presidency, concerns about her among Independents and moderate Republicans – the electoral segments which will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election – make her a political liability that could sink Mr. Biden even against Mr. Trump, and an albatross that he cannot afford against any other Republican presidential nominee.

If the President is serious about running again, I hope that his closest aide will be sitting down with Ms. Harris immediately after the midterms, advising her that she will soon be announcing that for personal reasons and with great regret, she had advised Mr. Biden to nominate someone else to run with him in 2024. 

I would suggest that the 2024 political hazard Ms. Harris presents to Democrats is potentially exponentially magnified if Mr. Biden chooses not to seek a second term.  Unless the Vice President affirmatively and promptly declares that she will not seek the presidency, Mr. Biden’s withdrawal will immediately cause some in the media – in both liberal and conservative quarters, for different reasons — to anoint Ms. Harris as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.  If she seeks the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination, I have severe doubts that progressive Democrats – who have an outsized voice in party affairs — will be able to unemotionally and pragmatically assess her qualifications and electoral prospects.  If she wins the nomination, I — as a resident of Wisconsin, which has become the ultimate swing state — don’t think she will be able to carry this state against Mr. Trump, let alone any other likely Republican presidential nominee with less baggage.  I’m finding that even those of our progressive Madison, WI, friends who are unwilling to express outright doubts about her competence have little faith in her Wisconsin electoral prospects.  If she can’t win here, it’s difficult to see how she can win the presidency.  If she seeks the nomination but loses the nomination to another candidate, I fear that it will be after a bitter campaign in which Democrats supporting any other candidate who is not also a woman of color will be denounced by the Woke segments of the party as either misogynist (if the competing candidate is male) or racist (if the competing candidate is white) or both (if the competing candidate is a white male) – despite the fact that there are regular indications that rank-and-file Democrats who are women and/or of color pragmatically prioritize competence and electability over diversity.  In a dilemma corresponding to the internecine discord facing Republicans related to Mr. Trump’s candidacy, I have severe doubts that if Ms. Harris runs, Democrats will be able to escape their own diversity-focused Wokeness sufficiently to cohere to defeat determined and organized Republican organizations in swing states (subject to the caveat that they might be able to do so if the opponent is Mr. Trump).

Make no mistake:  running against the wrong Democrat, Mr. Trump – or another like-minded Republican intent on instituting an American Apartheid – could fairly (i.e., without manipulation or fraud) win an Electoral College majority (if not the popular vote) in 2024, and thus, the presidency; if such a Republican does win the White House, the Republicans will not give it back.  And so:  who at this extremely early stage do I consider to be the right candidate for the Democrats’ 2024 Presidential nomination?  U.S. MN Sen. Amy Klobuchar is the first that comes to mind.  From a politically pragmatic standpoint, I am hoping that Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris will step back to clear the way for Ms. Klobuchar or some other competent and electable moderate Democrat to give us an opportunity to preserve our democracy in 2025 and beyond.