5/28/2023 0 Comments The backup plan![]() ![]() When the conversation stretched into the bar, it lingered on Governor Gavin Newsom, who is coasting to reelection after defeating a recall attempt in California, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who knows from personal experience about the rising threat of white nationalism in Michigan. Pritzker, the billionaire hotel-chain heir from Illinois, and Governor Jared Polis, the Coloradan with a mandate-light approach to COVID. Also in heavy rotation, according to Democratic power brokers in the mix (and familiar with months of similar conversations): Governor J. Governor Phil Murphy, the New Jerseyan whose national ambitions are among Washington's worst-kept secrets, was a close second. Governor Roy Cooper-the conference's host, who had twice won North Carolina in the same years the swing state was carried by Donald Trump-was the most frequent topic of shadow-campaign chatter. I am old? And yet many of the plugged-in Democrats wandered Pinehurst not entirely persuaded, calculating contingencies: If Biden's health turned, or if his polling truly collapsed, which of the party's governors might step up and save them from electoral ruin-and the nightmare of a Trump comeback? So why in the world now would he be like, 'You guys are right. He runs in '20 and everybody rolls their eyes, and he still wins. Or as another top Democrat puts it, He was told in '16 he couldn't cut it. It's been his life, says one of his longtime advisers. Yes! he told an interviewer nine months later, sighing a little performatively at having to keep repeating it. That's my expectation, he said early in his tenure. But between panel discussions, in the hallways and at the cocktail reception on the lawn, conversation shifted from grim-the midterms-to grimmer: the state of the party's planning for 2024, when Biden will stand for reelection on the eve of his 82nd birthday.īiden hasn't formally announced his campaign for a second term, but in his mind there's no question he's running. The lobbyists, donors, staffers, and elected officials were gathering for the spring policy meeting of the Democratic Governors Association, and the scheduled sessions concerned such topics as health care and diversity in governance. Inflation was at a 40-year high, Biden's disapproval rating sat at 56 percent, and editors at the New York Times were readying a front-page report about how his signature achievement$1.9 trillion in coronavirus-relief spending has barely registered with voters. ON A TUESDAY EVENING in April, nearly half a century after Joe Biden first publicly mused about running for president, an unsettled cross section of the Democratic Establishment assembled at Pinehurst, a golf resort in North Carolina. New York magazine | May 23 - JInside the 2024 soul-searching that's happening in every corner of the Democratic Party-except the White House. ![]()
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