The Democrats, in paving the way for Joe Biden to get the nomination in 2020 (which they did because they knew Bernie Sanders could not win), tied themselves to a senile old man.

The assumption was, of course, that even if Old Grandpa Joe couldn’t make it through the four years, the vice presidential pick would be young, energetic, intersectional, and an ideal heir to the Democrat nomination in 2024. What the Democrats got was… Kamala Harris. On paper, Kamala Harris checked all of those intersectional boxes. However, no one checked in with her staff to see if she was actually up to the job. The nuclear freeze that is now apparently ongoing between Biden and Harris is downright hilarious to Republicans and panic-inducing for Democrats.

The problem Democrats now face is the very real likelihood that Biden deteriorates to the point that not even Edith Wilson Jill Biden can hide his decline. Being a crappy boss, a poor people person, and a completely off-putting personality has no Constitutional standing on Kamala Harris’s position. If Joe Biden is not president, then Kamala will be. It’s as simple as that. And then she will lose, and lose badly, because her poll numbers are even worse than Biden’s, and in a theoretical match-up, Biden is losing to Trump.

All of this means that the Democrats are preparing to lose signficantly in 2022, with Nancy Pelosi already making noise about how she might not just fade away after her current term as Speaker, like she had promised, and Representative Cori Bush (D-BLM) already pointing fingers.

A note to Democrats who blame progressives after losing an election:

Forcing millions to start paying student loans again and cutting off the Child Tax Credit at the start of an election year is not a winning strategy.

We're warning you now, don't point fingers in November.

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) December 13, 2021

And with 2022 already looking like a red tsunami, 2024 is looking to be pretty awful for Democrats as well. The odds are slim that Joe Biden has the mental fortitude to run again, even if he was able to campaign from his basement over Zoom like it was 2020 (hmmm, maybe THAT is the point of continuing the COVID panic in perpetuity), and Kamala didn’t even make it to the first primary last time. If Kamala Harris became the de facto front-runner because she was already president, or Biden was not running again, the Democrats would be freaking out and looking for someone, anyone, to save them from the return of the Bad Orange Man, or Ron DeSantis, or whomever becomes the Republican nominee. Except the bench is so thin, Bernie is so old (even older than Biden), and the trial balloon of Pete Buttigieg has turned out to be a huge bust.

Would they be desperate enough to accept Hillary Clinton as their great white savior in 2024? An opinion piece in The Hill is floating the idea – and even though it should be a joke, you know there are Democrats out there who will take this seriously.

If those are the options, why not Hillary? She’s 74 years old, which is like being bathed in the fountain of youth compared to Biden. And she’s still stunned — five years later — that she actually lost to Donald Trump. In fact, she sounds no different than Trump in constantly complaining about all the reasons she lost and that, well, the election was stolen by Trump and the Russians anyway. That type of rhetoric is a big no-no for Trump, but A-OK if Hillary (or Stacey Abrams) does it. Rules are rules.”

Joe Concha, the author of this piece, points out that Hillary delivered her 2016 election speech recently… but was there an ulterior motive?

One more possible sign that Hillary is dipping her toe in the 2024 pool comes in the form of her bizarre decision to read her 2016 victory speech for something called “Masterclass.” It was one of the most cringeworthy things you’ll ever see.”

Here we have a former first lady, senator, secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee reading a speech for an election she lost. Of course, if The New York Times gave me an 85 percent chance of winning an election and I somehow lost to a guy who had never run for public office before, I’d have trouble absorbing it too.”

Since the election, Hillary has blamed her loss on misogyny, sexism, voter ID laws, Bernie Sanders, former FBI Director James Comey and Matt Lauer, along with dozens of other factors. (She hasn’t blamed neglecting to campaign in Wisconsin or deciding “I’m With Her” was a grabby campaign slogan.)”

It’s a five-year public therapy session in broad daylight. And in a sane world, she would have been laughed out of the room for reading such a speech. But this felt more like a trial balloon in an effort to see if there is still an appetite for the Clinton brand.”

In future years, Hillary’s grandchildren will probably watch this video and be told that “look how brave and courageous and professional Grandma was!” And they will probably cringe, because that’s what the rest of us are doing.

But back to the question: are the Democrats desperate enough to put Hillary on the top of the ticket again? At this point, I wouldn’t put it past them to kneecap Kamala and do it. After all, given the current numbers, Kamala is a guaranteed loss. Could she be convinced to “step aside” by the party leaders? It’s possible, especially if they made it clear to her that she wouldn’t be given front-runner treatment (and the media, despite their love of Kamala’s “intersectionality,” has no love for Kamala herself, and would act in the interests of the Democrats keeping power). An open primary would be brutal on Kamala Harris, even worse than last time, all because she IS the vice president. But an open primary would be brutal for Hillary as well, even with the Democrats clearing the field for her. The progressive radical left of the Squad has only grown over the last several years, and having the establishment Democrats basically “fix” the primary in order to make sure Biden beat Bernie was a bitter pill to swallow. I can’t see them readily accepting Hillary back as a candidate, not without a fight. And that fight would be an ugly one.

The fact that we can treat the idea of a Hillary Clinton revival comeback tour in 2024 as even a remote possibility screams volumes about the current state of the Democrats, and none of it is good.

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Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click