Opinion | Newsom, Harris, Buttigieg and the Democrats Definitely Not Challenging Joe Biden
There’s an art to being in the mix while saying you’re not.
Every Democratic politician with a speck of ambition right now is asking himself, or herself, the same question in the mirror this week: If 79-year-old Joe Biden drops dead or drops out, how prepared will I be to run for president?
Well, not every Democrat. Kamala Harris, by virtue of her status as vice president, asked herself and answered that question in the affirmative when Biden put her on the ticket in August 2020. Like all veeps, she’s unashamed about wanting to inherit the presidency. But for the dozen or so leading Democrats, manners require them to be coy about responding. Biden’s age, his infirmities, his poor pallor and his declining political appeal — 64 percent of Democratic voters want somebody other than Biden to run in 2024 — make the question less than rhetorical.
Still, political etiquette prohibits A-list politicians from challenging an incumbent president from their own party. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, such as when longshot Sen. Eugene McCarthy weakened President Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, thereby encouraging Sen. Robert Kennedy to join him in the race and drive Johnson out. In 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy could take on President Jimmy Carter without much drama because Kennedys can do whatever they want.
By signaling his “intention“ to run once more, Biden has blocked anybody but a C-lister from going up against him. But the party’s most ambitious players want an insurance plan in case fate or Joe himself deletes him from the race. And a host of Democratic aspirants know this very well.
The key to not running while really running (NRWRR) requires these aspirants to do most of the things a declared candidate does — raise campaign funds; tickle the media eye; stump for other candidates and put them in your political debt; prospect potential campaign staffers; and travel and give speeches. There’s also a list of things such an aspirant can’t do, and those reside in a politically negative space. He can’t criticize the president and must go out of his way to demonstrate his support. He can’t make multiple trips to Iowa or New Hampshire. He can’t be blatant about building a campaign staff, even a shadow one. And he must vociferously and repeatedly deny that he’s running.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently raised his national profile by buying ad time on Florida TV to criticize the state’s restrictive abortion laws and then sent out fundraising letters pegged to the stunt, stands as our leading NRWRR presidential candidate. “I have sub-zero interest,” he recently told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board about running for president, using the negative to imply the positive in time-honored NRWRR tradition. “It’s not even on my radar.”
A NRWRR candidate must also pretend the veep is the rightful heir if he belongs to her party. Newsom has spread a healthy schmear of cream cheese on this bagel, explicitly saying Harris should succeed Biden. The deceit runs both ways as nobody, including Harris, believes him. He’s also put himself in the NRWRR front ranks by leading the party on its signature issues, trumpeting his state’s new gun regulation and abortion rights legislation, and going out of his way to rip the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.
A shoe-in to win reelection as governor in November, Newsom will be term-limited out after that, leaving only one office suitable for his ambition. (Going from governor of California to U.S. senator is a demotion.) Newsom has about $25 million in his campaign war chest right now. He needn’t spend it all on his coast to reelection. What a starter fund for a presidential run in 2024.
Let’s stipulate that there’s no political shame in NRWRR. Just ask Biden, whose motto could be Always Be Not Running. Granted, he ran three all-out campaigns for president (1988, 2008 and 2020), but most of his career has been governed by the NRWRR playbook. Like Newsom, he kept his name out there by broadcasting the Democratic Party’s gospel, scouting the field, campaigning for other politicians and plotting his own rise with his kitchen cabinet. He’s not the only one to ride that strategy to the White House. Nixon was NRWRR between 1960 and 1968; Ronald Reagan’s pre-presidential political career was one NRWRR act after another. The only shame in NRWRR is to deny it too sincerely. Newsom, whose default setting is insincerity, has aced this part of the dance.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is almost Newsom’s equal when it comes to NRWRR. Unlike Newsom, Buttigieg can’t say he has sub-zero interest in running for president, as he already ran in 2020. He, too, denies any immediate presidential plans, saying “We are squarely focused on the job at hand.” Unlike the other aspirants, he doesn’t need an excuse to travel the country for exposure. As the nation’s de facto infrastructure czar, he has dispensed more pork around the country than Smithfield Foods, and that will work to his eventual political advantage. As my colleague Adam Wren reported last fall, dozens of Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign staffers moved into jobs with the Biden administration and Capitol Hill. He even has campaign vets in Harris’ office, giving him his own mini-deep state of experienced hands ready to rise when he next runs. (And there may be a lot of next runs: Buttigieg is young enough — just 40! — and ambitious enough to break Harold Stassen’s record for the most times anybody has run for president. Using Biden as his model, he could still be running in 2064 as he turns 80.)
Harris isn’t running for president in 2024, of course, she is just walking: assuming that Biden will repeat, but gathering her grit for a run should he not. As already noted, Harris complicates the NRWRR equation. But there’s no political rule that vaults the veep to the nomination, and especially not the presidency, after his or her president exits. Politics owes nobody nuthin. Just ask Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Dan Quayle and Al Gore, who were all foiled. Harris has had two years to establish herself as a viable presidential candidate, and to her credit she currently leads the Biden-less field in polls. But that advantage could dissolve in a moment if a C-list candidate open a wound on her in the primaries the way McCarthy did to Johnson.
Harris’ obvious vulnerabilities —she embodies ambitious coastal liberalism and was a flat candidate in 2020, dropping out two months before the first primary — give her fellow Democrats ample incentive to oppose her. Who might serve as the C-list candidate to spoil Harris’ candidacy in the early primaries and give Newsom, Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren a pretext motive to enter the race? Sen. Cory Booker? Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Billionaire Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who was spotted in the early primary state of New Hampshire recently, NRWRR as he spoke to its Democrats? Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo? Gov. Gretchen Whitmer? Stacey Abrams? Mitch Landrieu?
They’re all not running while running, and looking deeply into their morning mirrors.
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My favorite is Elizabeth Warren because she blew Mike Bloomberg out of the race in 2020 with her debate performance. Nominate your Biden replacement in an email to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed is pulling for Al Gore, who, at press time, is only 74. My RSS feed notes that Sen. Dianne Feinstein is 89, but refuses to make the joke.