New Jersey Goes Shopping – for a President(ial Ticket)
Joe Biden hadn’t even creakily crawled off the debate stage yet and the phones were already ringing.
Yank him.
That was the message.
Too old. Decrepit. Unfit for a showdown with Donald Trump, who looked positively virile – the exact word of one Democrat – by comparison.
Inevitably, the phones shook in Jersey, typically an ATM machine for national campaigns, and long a go-to trough for Biden.
Phil and Tammy Murphy dug in with a scheduled fundraiser for the president at their home.
“Tammy can at least get a cabinet position if the president wins reelection – but I don’t know now,” a party source glumly told InsiderNJ.
“It doesn’t look good.”
Panic didn’t quite set in among most of the party leaders, however.
Bossism is basically a static condition in New Jersey, so much like an iguana on sunny rocks might be slow to react, Biden’s onstage troubles failed to pervade with any urgency.
A few others were ready to find a bridge to dive off of if they couldn’t jump to the head of a parade with a replacement ticket for the party in time for the August convention.
So, who did they talk about in some of those frantic phone conversations?
Josh Shapiro’s name came up.
Governor from Pennsylvania. Proven winner in a battleground state. Good state. Good guy. Smart guy. Smart as a whip. Unlike – well, you get the picture. Plus, he’s from a neighboring state, just like Biden. Good for New Jersey.
So, Shapiro-Kamala Harris, that sounds…
Well, no.
“We’ll have to dump Harris.”
If Biden hit the bricks, she’d get the heave ho, too.
In those conversations, Cory Booker’s name surfaced.
Shapiro-Booker.
Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? One party member asked InsiderNJ.
Maybe, but it’s a little early for back-to-school office supplies.
Ok, ok.
Well, what about Shapiro-Wes Moore.
Wes Moore is the governor of Maryland, and such an unknown quantity in these ghettoized parts that on several occasions more than one source referred to him as “Westmoreland,” a general who had some trouble in Vietnam, and, incidentally, is dead. So, he’d be out. And maybe worse than Biden.
Other names besides Shapiro leading the ticket?
Gavin Newsom came up.
The governor of California.
An Essex source – party leader – said he likes Newsom. High tech. High energy. Can relate to him.
But can he win a battleground?
The phone went dead.
What about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer?
Battleground state. Tough chief executive. Almost kidnapped by a bunch of right-wing nuts. Can take the fight to Trump.
People like the idea.
But does she want the job?
Whitmer seldom readily communicated a voracious appetite to be president, the opposite of someone like, well, Gavin Newsom, who looks like he walks around with an Oval Office drape measurer the way Neymar keeps in tow Billy Idol’s hairdresser.
Anyone else.
Michelle Obama.
The ultimate panic button candidate.
And beloved.
Why, exactly?
Well, she was married to that other guy. Wasn’t he a president?
“I’d vote for her,” a source lazily opined, as if she might withhold her vote from the others on principle – or something.
Anyway, it was grim.
As InsiderNJ columnist Fred Snowflack wrote this morning, many sources wanted the party to instantaneously pull the plug on Biden, and if clusters of leaders got that message from the rank and file, they wanted to make sure they maintained an edge and didn’t find themselves, if not in ballot Siberia of all places, well then shuffling down an empty side street with the sitting president, accompanied by the faintest sounds of an unreachable brass band playing jubilantly in the distance.
What do you think?
Will not happen because it is not legal to change the nominee. You candy just hilly-nilly swap out a Presidential candidate. It will have to be Harris, either taking over if he drops out or Harris having Congress vote for the 25th amendment. But Harris is the ticket. This is what the DNC wanted, an unvetted nominee, hiding him in a basement or behind picture notecards with hand selected questions when he is force to come out from downstairs.
Vote away. The media, the DNC, made up words and phrases, like “cheap fakes” got us into this farce and a bunch of pretend votes are not going to get us out of this mess. The truth hurts.
EDIT.. you can’t just will nilly
Sheldon Whitehouse I think would be a great candidate and Booker or Michelle Obama could be the vice president
Every few days Thomas Jefferson and/or Betsy Ross post right wing silly Willy-Nilly comments.
Read up on each party’s nomination process.
My grandmother, born 1885, valued her vote and often said she would vote for the candidate running on the Democrat’s Platform.
Anonymous:
Thank you for your comment. I am far from right wing and many of my post Jefferson disagrees with. I am a true centrist, searching for some common sense and truth from both sides and there is nothing silly about that.
Just like your grandmother, my mother was a Democrat. She also taught her children to honor our right to vote. It is a precious gift from democracy.
With democracy we are also granted the right of thought and the ability to express those thoughts. So, I am appreciative to Insider NJ for its’ forum.
,
Interesting that my name, Thomas Jefferson pops up in numerous anti-Trump and pro-Democrazy posts. You Democrat-Communists accepted the FACTS that Joe Biden was going to be your one-and-only candidate for the Democrazy Party. Now, you whine, cry and moan that he’s going to get smashed in a landslide because he’s non compos mentis. Too late to change candidates, especially if Biden’s wife doesn’t want it. Jill Biden said that “we need to vote Democrat to save and protect democracy”. No! What she really meant is “we need to vote Democrat to save her and her family’s arses” from criminal prosecution from money laundering, criminal racketeering, taking cash for political favors from America’s enemies (e.g., Communist China, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, et al.).
Hey, my grandparents and parents voted Republican all of their lives. When they died, they were registered Democrats.
Biden-Harris. We know that Joe knows how to run a country. Get behind him and help him win. Start showing strength in how the team will support him. Stress what he has done and will continue to do. Tell why democracy is foremost in this election. Have President Biden focus on issues in next debate and listen only to issues not the nonsense that Trump says. Respond only to issues not to any of the remarks made by Trump. Tell us what you will do Mr. President not what Donald just said. I want to hear you answer the questions telling us what you will do.