If for some reason Joe Biden isn't the 2024 candidate who would be the Democrat's Thomas Kirkman?

 

Hal Brown's Blog

This is a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and other subjects. My posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky. I'm a retired MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and mental health center director who was also a cranberry farmer. Scroll archives on bottom of page to see previous blog stories. There are new ones added almost every day, although if I don't have anything original to say I try not to say anything at all.

There is every indication that Joe Biden is what is referred to as a superager or super-ager:

A superager, also known as a super-ager, is a person who is at least eighty years of age and retains the memory skills and capacity of someone at least thirty years younger. This population falls well outside the "normal"  memory skill range for people their age. (Reference)

Full-discosure: I will be 80 next year. Do I have the cognitive capacity to be president? You can be the judge of that.

He is likely to live and remain capable of governing at a high level through a second term. Consider Harry Belafonte now being memorialized because he died at 96. In 2020, which would have made him 93 years old, "he spoke with pride about the racial protests that spread across the US in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd, writing that “we have never had so many White allies, wailing to stand together for freedom, for honor, for a justice that free us all in the end…” Reference.

How could I not click to read this on The Washington Post website (subscription):

I am rewatching "Designated Survivor" (read review) and this makes me wonder who would be a Thomas Kirkman? He becomes president when terrorists kill everyone attending the State of the Union addresss. He proves to be an excellent president. Although an independent in the TV show his views are most closely aligned with the Democrats. He's among the highest ranked TV presidents almost tied for number one with Josiah Bartlet from "The West Wing" on Ranker. Kirkman was a Cabinet member as HUD secretary, Pete Buttigieg is transportation secretary. Just a thought....

Below, in order of least likely to most likely:

10. Phil Murphy/J.B. Pritzker: governors of Illinois and New Jersey

9. Raphael G. Warnock: Georgia senator

8. Bernie Sanders: Vermont senator 

7. Amy Klobuchar: Minnesota senator

6. Josh Shapiro: Pennsylvania governor

5. Gavin Newsom: California governor

4. Gretchen Whitmer: Michigan governor (as I write this she's on Morning Joe (image here)

3. Jared Polis: The Colorado governor

2. Kamala D. Harris, vice president (also being discussed on Morning Joe this morning, image here)

1. Pete Buttigieg: transportation secretary

On the worth mentioning list (here) I think New Jersey senator Cory Booker, now on Morning Joe (image) belongs near the top list which even though the title says top 10 the list has 11 possibilities. 

As I think of what the winning ticket would be sans Joe Biden I lean towards Harris/Buttigieg. The more I see Kamala Harris, most recently at abortion rights rallies like this...

... the more I think she has the political chops to win the presidency.

She has been in the limelight ever since the Supreme Court ruled on abortion in the Dobbs case and even more so since the abortion pill brouhaha. This has worked to significantly up her national exposure and profile, far more than her handling the typical tasks assigned to a vice president like representing the United States at overseas meetings or going to sites of disasters or shaking hands foreign dignitaries like she did this morning prior to the president of South Korea meeting with President Biden:

It has also given her experience speaking forcefully to a large television audience. It makes sense to compare her to Hillary Clinton in this respect. There are many factors pundits have elaborated on to explain her loss  but it's impossible to determine whether factoring in all of them she would had won if she'd been a man. How many people didn't vote for her because of misogyny or because they didn't like how she came across? These aren't the kinds of questions people tend to answer honestly when a pollster asks them. Some, like this author, and like this author, say she did. Others, like this author, say this had nothing to do with her loss.

We can thank the anti-abortion forces for giving Harris a far bigger platform than just being a representative of the United States when the president doesn't do this.

It helps that support for abortion with one or another limitation is at a record high. Not only among Democrats, but  a third of Republicans also qualify themselves as mostly supporting abortion rights

Of course there isn't a male chauvinist bigot in the country who will vote for her... thankfully there aren't enough of them to swing a national election.

Were Buttigieg not a happily married gay father he might have something of an edge over Harris except that as heir apparent it would be awkward and poor optics to have her run for the position she already has. Joe Biden selected her to run with him for various reasons but one of them was that he thought she would be qualified to be president if something untoward happened to him.

As for Buttigieg, "No mayor has ever ascended directly to the American presidency, and only three presidents – Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge – served as mayors before eventually taking the White House." (Reference)

John Lindsay is probably the best known mayor to run a credible campaign for president and he was the mayor of New York City. Buttigieg was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Like Harris, Buttigieg got  unexpected national publicity. This happened after the East Palestine train wreck. 

Click above to read article 

Of course there's the matter of him being gay.

If it was up to residents of Portland, Oregon, where I live in the suburbs, the majority of people wouldn't give a tinker's damn about his sexual orientation. After all, these are two of the stories on local TV today:

Article one and two

Despite the ginned up focus on being anti-anything remotely LGBTQ+ which Ron DeSantis has made a major plank in his ludicrous anti-woke bridge to nowhere - I mean taking on Disney...

... the majority of straight Americans are totally accepting of members of the LGBTQ+ community and no doubt many of them have family members, friends, or acquaintances who fit into one of the categories in this list of letters.

For winning elections anywhere but in the most red of red places being a woke warrior is worthless. 

The same goes for someone running as a woman of color.

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From Feb. 26, 2023: Tucker Carlson might be Trump's best pick to run with him for VP

  

Introduction:

The following isn't an original idea. It is, however, one made more relevant today than it was two days ago now that Tucker Carlson is without a job. He must be wondering what to do next... aside from not having anything else that piqued my interest to write about I decided to republish my blog from February.

Click images to enlarge them.

Below: Unchanged blog from Feb. 23, 2023. On the bottom of the page are some images I made yesterday.

By Hal Brown

Anyone who says the following might be the best pick for Trump to ordain as his running mate:

From The Washington Post:

How a small-town train derailment erupted into a culture battle

The East Palestine train accident is one of hundreds each year, but it’s become a significant political flashpoint

Fox News host Tucker Carlson used his show to bring race into the discussion, decrying an alleged lack of urgency by the government for a blue-collar community with few people of color. “Is it because these are not their voters?” he asked Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who agreed with the premise.

This is small potatoes compared to Tucker Carlson's latest coup enabled by Kevin McCarthy. Whether or not other media are able to get all the J6 videos of the Capitol attack his getting first dibs will score big time points with Trump.

What puzzles me is, even though the word is in quotes, why Carlson refers to this as "insurrection day" instead rebranding it with a term that most people peacefully entered the Capitol and were there to make sure the election wasn't stolen. 

With the speculation as to whether Trump would prevail in the GOP primary leaning heavily towards it being the former president there has also been chatter in the punditry about who is angling to be his vice presidential pick. There's no similar discussion about who might be currying favor with Ron DeSantis to persuade him they would be his best running mate choice.

Look at this web search:

First, what would be in it for Tucker Carlson? 

While he's the top banana at Fox News, being second banana to a president of the United States who might die in office would make him president, and assuming Trump lived it would position him to run for president in 2028. The answer for him in one word is "power". He'd have to be patient and should Trump win he knows he'd be hand maiden to a megalomaniac but time would be on his side. In addition, what would he have to lose since if Trump was defeated he could simply go back to his former Fox News gig.

The second and more important question is what would be in it for Trump. What would Carlson bring to the ticket that nobody else would, and what are the drawbacks of having his as a running mate?

The only drawback I can think of is that Tucker is another crowd pleasing performer, an actual star. It's possible he could upstage Trump. He's Marjorie Taylor Greene without being certifiably insane.

The benefits include Carlson's star power. Trump could make sure Carlson never upstages him when they are literally appearing on the same stage by warning him about this. Carlson is smart enough never to do this. 

The only possible better lead-in act for a Trump rally than Tucker Carlson is Marjorie Taylor Greene, but does Trump really want a screaming manic introducing him? Besides, he can include her as a member of his rally show cast and she can appear before Carlson. Greene, Carlson, Trump: now that would be a MAGA crowd pleaser. 

With Trump who would make the best, i.e., the most competent vice president is irrelevant. It was a fluke that he picked Mike Pence who actually had some governing experience. He picked him because he was a national unknown who wouldn't upstage him. He believed in his grandiose self-confidence that he didn't need anyone to help him win.

With Trump running again he may have rethought this and want to run with someone who has their own huge fan base. He may have a moment of humility and want to run with someone that may actually bring him additional votes in the primary coming from those who lean towards DeSantis because they see him as Trumpian without being Trump. 

For Trump it is always about winning. Who can forget this?

The question I have is whether the star of a long-running hit show is if he'd be willing to allow an equally talented understudy to be hired.

Addendum: 

As a reward to Marjorie Taylor Greene Trump could make her his Chief of Staff. She's adept at sucking up and has demonstrated this with Kevin McCarthy. No puns intended here...

Click above to read snarky replies to this tweet.

Can you guess who just tweeted this?

Hubris is the delusion that causes people to mistake themselves for God. They imagine they have power, wisdom and foresight they don’t actually possess. It’s a species of mental illness. 

It is Carlson's latest tweet:

I am sure that the graduate of Harvard and Yale Law knows the meaning of the word "hubris". He's obviously not referring to himself, a high priest of hubris.

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In June of 2016 the blog had the most readers. Here's what I was posting then.

Updates:

I asked ChatGPT AI to write a Shakespearian style sonnet about Tucker. This is what it came up with before the service got overloaded and couldn't be accessed. I wanted it to write a haiku about Tucker.

Oh, Carlson Tucker, pundit fierce and bold, Whose tongue doth lash with wit and venom keen, Thou art a force to make the blood run cold, When thou dost speak of politics and spleen.

Thy voice doth ring with cadence like a bell, And words like arrows pierce the heart and mind, Thou art a champion of the right-wing swell, And of conservative ideals thou art aligned.

Yet some do find thy rhetoric too harsh, And claim that thou dost stoke the flames of hate, But thou dost hold thy ground with steadfast marsh, And boldly speak the truth, though others chide and berate.

So let the critics rail and vent their spleen, For Carlson Tucker, thou art our pundit king.

Here's what it came up with as an Ogden Nash style poem:

Tucker Carlson, a man of the hour, His opinions, they do tower, A pundit with a gift of gab, Whose words can make the viewers grab.

He talks of politics and the state, His commentary, never late, Some might say his views are skewed, But his arguments, they do exude.

He's got a wit like no one else, A pundit who's not on the shelf, He's got the charm, he's got the flair, And his followers, they do not spare.

So whether you love him or you hate, Tucker Carlson, he won't abate, His commentary, he will always bring, A pundit who can make you sing.

This is the limerick it generated:

There once was a pundit named Tucker, Whose views on politics would often sucker, He'd speak with great zeal, And sometimes appeal, To those who found his arguments tougher.

 I could change the fifth line to a dirty one...

Click above to read

Excerpt:

"What if he runs?" Wilson added. "He's rich enough. He'd instantly have an online fundraising juggernaut second only to Trump, and perhaps surpassing him. He's polarizing, terrible, and utterly amoral ... in short, better than Ron DeSantis for the base. I'd argue he's the only Republican who presents a material danger to Donald Trump in a primary. Celebrity, money, mental acuity, cynicism, pro-Putin isolationism, and an overt love of authoritarianism are a pretty strong secret sauce for the MAGA base. Celebrity got Trump the [White House]. It could certainly do the same for Tucker."

All the qualities that make Carlson's potential candidacy seem far-fetched would be considered strengths in a GOP primary, Wilson argues.

"Spare me your 'That could never happen. Even Trump's GOP would never vote for a former TV host pushing white replacement theory,'" he wrote. "That's PRECISELY who they'd vote for."

"This iteration of 'A Face In the Crowd' doesn't end with a revelation of the real character of the showman-as-politician," Wilson concluded. "This one ends with Tucker running and possibly winning a herrenvolk campaign, where his flaws don't matter, only his capacity for hate."

New: HUFFPOST assumes everyone knows Harry Potter and that everyone but Harry is afraid to call Voldemort by his name... my image. The story just notes how hardly anybody on Fox News is mentioning the Tucker Carlson story.

Addendum:

These are some images I made yesterday:

Below: Not too many people assume Tucker is dead, more likely with his star power if he has died it is only temporary and he'll be a zombie king leading his undead hoard to continue his attack on the living liberals.

Below: Only Tucker and perhaps a few top Fox News insiders know why Rupert Murdoch really fired him. It is possible that the reason is quite simple. Murdoch may have seen a behind the scenes video of Tucker joking about why Lesley Ann Smith said they called off their engagement.

Below, the HUFFPOST top story title and above what they really meant to say

Rudy and GOP MAGA maniacs in the House want to turn Hunter Biden into a master spy...

 

Hal Brown's Blog

This is a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and other subjects. My posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky. I'm a retired MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and mental health center director who was also a cranberry farmer. Scroll archives on bottom of page to see previous blog stories. There are new ones added almost every day, although if I don't have anything original to say I try not to say anything at all.

There was no there there with Benghazi so at least there is a there there with the GOP's apoplectic reaction to Bud Lite commercials. There is a there there if you believe that anything related to accepting LGBTQ+ people as regular folks is akin, if not worse than, fattening up your baby and eating it's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

There is a there that's actually there with Hunter Biden. This "there" is that he actually did have a laptop. What is on it is not known is what's on it, well, if you believe Rudy Giuliani, he knows what's on it. 

Last night when I read the article Giuliani hints he could use Hunter Biden's laptop as defense in Dominion case initially I had nothing particular to write about. I did think of an illustration (above) which basically conveyed my reaction.

Excerpt:

Instead of blaming Trump's election loss on voting machines, Giuliani focused on the theory that suppression of a story about Hunter Biden caused Trump to lose. 

Attorney Robert Costello spoke as a guest on Giuliani's Sunday radio program.

"Well, they knew it was going to involve Hunter Biden because they knew that once I gave the laptop to you and you were going to various media organizations to see whether they would publish this material they were concerned," Costello said. 

According to the statistics," the attorney added, "17% of the people that voted for Biden said that they would not have voted for Biden they would have voted for Trump if they knew what was on the laptop."

Giuliani declared Costello's statistics to be "proven facts."

"So you could say the election was the election was stolen before it was stolen," Giuliani declared. "I mean before you get to counting."

That was last night. This morning I decided to expand on my thoughts and republish a blog (bottom of page) which I wrote about Hunter Biden in February.

What, pray tell, is supposed to be on the laptop that would have been so damaging to Hunter Biden, that could possibly lead people not to vote for his father? I'll get to that.

Forget the jiggered voting machines programmed to change Trump votes to Biden votes. It was Hunter's Mac laptop that led to the illegitimate election of Joe Biden.

This is what Wikipedia says:

....
In October 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Bidenthat was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop in 2019. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a front page story that presented emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The story was based on information provided to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump by the computer shop's owner, John Paul Mac Isaac. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the data on the laptop, including one of two key emails used by the Post in their initial reporting.^[1][2]

Trump attempted to turn the story into an October surprise to hurt Joe Biden's campaign, saying he had acted corruptly regarding Ukraine while in office.^[3][4][5] The hard drive data had been shared with the FBI and Republican operatives such as Trump advisor Steve Bannon before it became publicly known.^[6]

PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that, while "over time, there has been less doubt that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden", the laptop "was real in the sense that it exists, but it didn't prove much", as "[n]othing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son's tenure as a director for Burisma".^[7]

This is what Snopes had to say.

The computer repairman who ended up with Hunter's Mac, by sheer chance, was named Mac.

I'm rewatching "Designated Survivor" now with my partner who never saw it. If you haven't watched it I'm not giving you a major spoiler to write that in it a member of the US House who is a spy ends up becoming vice president (lower right below). Perhaps Rudy watched the series and from the fevered recesses of his mind this percolated up and became his own delusion.

Does Rudy think that the laptop contains proof that Hunter and his father were in cahoots in a conspiracy to make him president along with co-conspirators Volodymyr Zelensky and (who knows what the deranged Rudy believes) the evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his white pussycat?

The best spies never get caught. We may never discover they even existed. They certainly would never leave traces of their nefarious machinations on a laptop, let alone send it to a repair shop. Then again, Hunter made some bad choices in his life so perhaps there's a remote, however minuscule, possibility that Hunter is a spy. Maybe he managed to cover up the highest of high treason committed by his vice president father which thus enabled him to become president.

If Trump was Putin's puppet, maybe Joe Biden was working for the ultimate puppet master George Soros.

Soros or, for James Bond fans, Smersh, it doesn't really matter who one believes Hunter, and Joe's, overlord was. After all, who are you going to believe, Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor or hapless Hunter?

Update: 

Hunter Biden's lawyer fires shot at 'unhinged' Marjorie Taylor Greene

This is what I wrote on Feb. 2, 2024:

Hunter Biden tells House GOP I'm going lower when you go low

By Hal Brown

Left, DonkeyHotey caricature, right my adaptation 

.

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In June of 2016 the blog had the most readers. Here's what I was posting then.

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