Maybe Chris Sununu Is Not Your Psychic Friend. He's Not Even Your Psychic Frenemy
At no time does Sununu’s hands leave his crystal ball!
Hey, so President Joe Biden is running for re-election. You might’ve noticed from his official campaign launch and all the time he says, “Help me finish the job!” But people who are very bad at subtle clues like all that Dark Brandon ‘24 merch insist that Biden’s not running. Why? Well, he’s old and only getting older. There’s no cure for his advanced age condition.
Chris Sununu, the current Republican governor of New Hampshire, is so certain that Biden won’t run for a second term that he’s more or less written his own “West Wing” fan fiction script detailing this imagined scenario. He shared his treatment Tuesday with Fox News host Sandra Smith.
“I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen,” he said, as if veering into the speculative science fiction genre, “but I think there’s a greater than 50 percent chance he’s not on the ballot come November of ’24.”
Stating there’s a “greater than 50 percent chance” makes his wild mass guess seem more data driven, but this is still Kreskin territory.
SUNUNU: … [Biden’s] going to go through the primary process effectively unchallenged. A year from now, he’s going to collect all the delegates. His health is not going to be good.
Oh, so Sununu is a doctor now in addition to a mentalist.
SUNUNU: He can always use that as a reason to step out and basically tell all of his delegates to go for somebody else and kind of be the kingmaker. It wouldn’t be unheard of for the Democrats to try to manipulate their convention that way. They’ve done that before.
He’s apparently referring to the 1968 Democratic convention, which worked out so well for the party that the eventual nominee ended up on the receiving of an Electoral College rout.
The party was also far more divided in 1968, after President Johnson declined to run for a full second term. There were four competing factions — the labor unions and party bosses, the college-educated and anti-war wing, minorities, and white Southerners, many of whom ended up going with segregationist George Wallace’s independent campaign. The party today still represents a wide spectrum of identities and ideologies but it’s fully united under Biden. And the Wallace voters all wear red hats now.
Also, if Biden’s health deteriorated significantly enough that he couldn’t serve another term, he’d back Kamala Harris as his replacement, as that’s sort of the VP deal.
SUNUNU: [T]he other opportunity is somebody comes in this fall. Now, I think if an opponent were to challenge him this fall it’s probably going to be a self-funder. It’s probably going to be somebody with a little bit of name ID nationally and maybe even someone who isn’t a politician.
Democrats aren’t Republicans who fall over for “outsiders.” They usually prefer candidates with experience or at least some basic qualifications for the job, like previously holding some political office. Democrats are somewhat immune to Trumps.
As far as self-funding goes, Mike Bloomberg tried that and Biden still creamed him.
SUNUNU: I don’t think any of the Democratic governors are going to stand up and do it this fall. They’re probably just hoping to be coronated by Joe and [First Lady] Jill Biden next summer. But I’m predicting probably at least one, if not two people still jump in this fall, challenge him right here in New Hampshire and make a run at it.
This is absurd fantasy. Biden isn’t going to collect delegates in a primary where he’s running against a kook and a loon (either one applies to Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) and then at the convention literally gift the delegates to someone for whom no one cast a primary ballot. It’s completely out of character and would make no sense. Sununu should save his pitches for a “Game of Thrones” reboot.
But at least his predictions for the Democratic primary are amusingly fanciful. He is simply in tedious denial about the Republican primary Donald Trump is dominating.
“My sense is you’ll be down to four, five, maybe six candidates by Iowa,” he said. “Four or five by New Hampshire. And then when it becomes a one-on-one race shortly after New Hampshire, Trump’s in trouble.”
Trump is up double digits over every other candidate. It’s no better in head-to-head matchups. Not that it matters for Sununu, who stood behind Trump in 2016, even after the “Access Hollywood” tape. Sununu’s inevitable endorsement of third-time nominee Trump is a demoralizing future we can all safely predict.
[Mediaite]
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Oh, crap, I just realized. THEY DO NOT HAVE A WORKING STRATEGY TO COUNTER DARK BRANDON.
"It wouldn’t be unheard of for the Democrats to try to manipulate their convention that way."
DUDE. The last Republican National Convention didn't even have a >platform< because the GOP "kingmakers" were too scared to let voters know what they actually planned to do.