It’s clearer than ever, in light of former President Donald Trump’s conviction and President Joe Biden’s ongoing struggles, that both political parties should move on and start over with new nominees.
On the Democratic side, national leaders should listen to legendary Democratic strategist James Carville and then go a step beyond. They should find a way to push Biden off the party’s ticket for 2024.
Carville was at it again recently, blasting his party’s political tone-deafness. It’s a message he has pushed for several years now. Beginning at the 6:15 mark of an interview with the Politicon podcast, Carville said that “Democrat messaging is full of s***. … Don’t talk about f***** Gaza and student loans. That’s so out [there].”
Citing polls showing both of those issues far, far down the list of voters’ concerns, Carville then said: “Why are we forgiving student loans for people that go to Harvard? Which — according to [marketing professor] Scott Galloway, quite accurately, is nothing but a hedge fund that has classrooms — well, they got a $52 billion f***ing surplus! Why are taxpayers going to bail these people out?! Why don’t you come out for a proposal to tax every university endowment over $5 billion and use that money to give their former students relief?”
Carville’s message was that Democrats should be talking about the “cost of living” and about issues related to the Supreme Court. Combine that with his several years of complaining about “wokeness” taking over the Democratic Party, and what Carville is consistently saying is that Democrats need to start sounding populist messages rather than appealing to leftist elites.
While Carville’s latest rant did not include calls to remove Biden from the ticket (and indeed, he long has said he thinks well of Biden), he has said repeatedly in recent years that Biden shows political weakness nationally. But he has said that “right below the presidential level,” the Democratic Party is quite “talented.” To New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in March, he listed the following names: “Mitch Landrieu, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock, Gretchen Whitmer, Gina Raimondo, Roy Cooper.”
Carville is right. If Democrats really do think Trump is a menace to the nation and the world, they need to put up a stronger candidate than Biden to beat him. To do so, they also need to stop kowtowing to the woke left and start appealing to the very broad center of the electorate.
Democratic insiders know the reality: While Biden isn’t technically senile, he is growing so physically limited that he gets tired very easily. And when he is tired, his brain, like that of people of any age, gets somewhat foggier.
He isn’t up for the job now, and he certainly won’t be up for it for four more years.
And then, of course, there’s Biden’s presumed opponent, who was convicted Friday by a unanimous New York state jury on 34 felony counts.
In light of the verdict, Trump should withdraw from the presidential race. There is no other honorable option.
This is simple: Our system of laws requires that we respect unanimous juries. The president is the chief executive of the laws of the United States. For the sake of honoring our laws and Constitution, nobody should run for the office of president while convicted of felonies by unanimous juries of citizen peers.
Period. End of story.
It matters not that Trump has the right to appeal. It matters not that he might win on appeal. What matters is what is good for the country. It is not good for the country, indeed for the free world, to have its fate rest on the ins and outs of complicated appeals. It is not good for the country to have as one of its only two main choices for president someone who literally may be behind bars while in office.
Remember that these are state crimes, not federal ones, for which Trump is convicted. Even if one believes the dubious proposition that a president has the power under federal law to pardon himself for federal crimes, it is undeniable that the presidential pardon power does not extend to state crimes. If Trump does not win his appeal, and if the judge applies the sentence for a 34-count conviction that would apply to ordinary people, then Trump will be behind bars.
One cannot bring leaders of Congress for important meetings all the way from Capitol Hill to a New York prison. And one cannot be in the Situation Room for a crisis while behind bars.
Repeat: While I’ve made my thoughts on Trump’s overall lack of fitness for office clear elsewhere, this is not about him. It is about the nation he asks to lead.
It is not fair to U.S. citizens to present them with this awful Hobson’s choice. Trump must withdraw.