Potential replacements for Biden.

There’s been a lot of talk about replacing Joe Biden, so I think it’s useful to actually go through the potential candidates in question to see if that’s realistic. If you look at several betting odds websites, the following people are seen as potential replacements:

Kamala Harris
Gavin Newsom
Michelle Obama
Hillary Clinton
JB Pritzker
Pete Buttigieg

Everyone else is trading at $0.01 or less, so we will take this group as our realistic replacements. Intersectionality is such a core pillar of the left that I can’t imagine they would pass over Kamala Harris for a white man. If I’m correct, that narrows the list down to the following:

Kamala Harris
Michelle Obama
Hillary Clinton

If they can get Michelle to run that’s the obvious play, but she’s not been in the public eye in nearly a decade and really has no track record of any kind. The highest position she’s held was being a Human Resources VP at a college. She’s never actually campaigned before, never held a position in government before, and has taken zero steps towards doing so since Barack left. I think the chances are very low that she wants to potentially spend the next 9 years of her life as a political figurehead, if she could even win. I think that’s why PredictIt isn’t even taking bets on her.

Hillary Clinton obviously wants badly to be President, but she already lost to Trump and her baggage is legendary. I don’t think Democrats want the whole campaign to be about Russiagate and Epstein Island. Hillary would be the candidate to energize Republicans most, and there’s even the question of whether she wants to expose herself to potential prosecution by running. If she doesn’t run she’s overwhelmingly likely to be left alone. If she runs? Maybe not.

I’ve seen some chatter about Gretchen Whitmer, but she has virtually zero name ID and an approval rating under 50% in her home state. She lacks the national donor network to raise the necessary funds, has scandals of her own, and would rile up the far left because of her Israel stance. I can’t see them picking her.

That leaves Kamala as the only real choice. She would quell the internal rebellion and maintain at least part of the Biden network. But she polls even worse than Biden does, and would likely be seen as a sacrificial lamb by many. That would mean very few prominent Democrats would be interested in VP, signaling to voters that the party is giving up. I don’t think they can afford to do that.

So I think Joe Biden will remain the nominee. The betting odds reflect that bettors tend to agree. By the end of the week we should have a much better idea of where we stand on that question.