No. of Recommendations: 4
Come on man, smart guy like you still in denial? Carville says you don't play your 7th string quarterback at the big game, that's wrong? If Hunter and Jill had announced, two years ago, that Joe would not be seeking reelection, whoever earned the Dem nomination fair and square would have beat trump, period.
No, I think all of that is wrong. Had Biden declined to run, it would be entirely possible for whoever took the nomination to lose to Trump. Voters were mad about inflation, and mad about border policy - and that wasn't going to go away for any replacement candidate. Almost no one knows who Jeh Johnson is other than political junkies, and it's hard to see any candidate emerging from a competitive Democratic nomination that wouldn't have been saddled with the bad politics of the border problems - no matter what they said in the campaign. And that's ignoring the fact that Harris would have been the odds-on favorite to win the nomination to begin with. Trump has many, many, MANY flaws - but he is a formidable media presence, was far better equipped to do outreach on New Media rather than old, and had the headwind both of thermostatic rejection of the majority party and voter dissatisfaction with the economy, the border, and crime. There's no "slam dunk" win for the Democrats in an alternate timeline.
Trump could only run for a third term if he's still very, very popular among the GOP - which is only going to happen if he's in decent shape with the overall electorate, with a general satisfaction with economic conditions. In that scenario, the Democrats could run a passable campaign and still lose, especially if we have another cycle where social issues like immigration and crime are still high-salience and healthcare/abortion are low-salience.
