Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Yeah, but there’s a real difference when that VP is a Joe Biden or Dick Cheney who didn’t really have an expectation to be the heir apparent, and when the president is old enough that not finishing a term is a real possibility. There’s an uncomfortably high (though still low) chance Biden actually has to be replaced on the campaign trail, and while that’s never a good thing, it’s a lot worse when you’ve saddled your VP with tasks like solving immigration and getting voting rights passed when she never really had the power to do either of those things. “Eats shit on tough issues so the president doesn’t have to” is a valuable service from a VP, but not if you want people to be ready to accept her at any moment as a drop in replacement.
So you’re trying to talk about two different things and joining them together. On one hand being the heir apparent, and on the other having the president keel over.
Biden was absolutely the heir apparent. If his son hadn’t died he would have ran, and our country may have been on a much different course than it’s been for the past 6 years. For many of us, the idea of Cheney becoming president because of health reasons was pretty damn scary. For both bush terms!
Speaking of heir apparent, George Sr was definitely not considered qualified to follow in Reagan’s footsteps. He actually called Reagan’s policies voodoo economics.
In any case, if the president did have to step down hypothetically in 2 years, Kamala Harris is not going to appear any dumber than any of the other VP s we’ve had in my lifetime. She would be a placeholder until the next election, just like any of the others would have been.
They’re intimately related because keeling over can happen in close proximity to an election. I never viewed Biden as heir apparent for Obama, maybe others did, but it didn’t matter because there were plenty of other choices and he’d still have a full primary cycle to be tested and discarded if he ate too much shit to be elected. I’m not even sure he would have beaten Clinton if he ran.
If Biden keels over 1 year from now, we’re in deep shit, and his chances of doing so are MUCH higher than other recent presidents. Pretending that Biden has the same negligible risk of leaving office early as any other president is the whole problem with their approach.