Former President Barack Obama will have a major 2024 primary say within a fractured Democratic Party, one prominent former presidential and political strategist said.
Dick Morris, who advised former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, predicted Democrats will be divided heading into the next presidential election. The split will be between progressives and centrists.
“There will be a runaway primary in the Democratic Party because of the woke left wing,” Morris said told the Washington Examiner. “The left is going to blame [President Joe] Biden and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer for not passing their program and for not getting tougher with [Sen. Joe] Manchin.”
Morris told the Examiner that as Super Tuesday approaches, Democrats will need to rally Black voters in the South. “The major voice will be Obama’s,” Morris told the Examiner.
“That’s why he put South Carolina three days before Super Tuesday,” Morris added. “The Black vote could be structured in South Carolina, and then be carried through the rest of the South and have enough to move the whole convention as it did with Biden — and would be now.”
One senior aide to a progressive 2020 Democrat primary candidate told the Examiner that the party faces challenges in connecting with most Americans.
“Their language, their messaging, is not resonating with the American public, which are mostly moderates and conservatives,” the aide told the Examiner. “Right now, people care about making sure they can pay their rent. But there’s also crime.
“[By dismissing such issues,] that group has painted themselves into a corner for the next few years at least.”
Polls are showing that many Americans do not want Biden, who will be 82 in four years, to run again. An alarming majority of independent voters (67%) in the latest Politico/Morning Consult poll say they hope Biden does not run for president again, including 50% saying, “no, definitely not.”
Thus, other Democrats likely will test the waters.
“I started last week with the opinion that [Biden] was going to seek reelection. And I ended the week with a distinct opinion he wasn’t,” one former swing state Democratic Party chair told the Examiner.
The New York Times on Sunday ran a story that listed several potential Democrat candidates — e.g., Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. — should Biden not seek reelection.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that Biden “has every intention of running for reelection.”
Not everyone was convinced.
“Not only did they not really, really push back on the notion — if that is out there, you step on that like it’s a wildfire, you get your feet blistered, pounding the s**t out of anybody who says something stupid like that. And they didn’t do that,” the Democratic Party official told the Examiner. “Then, a list was produced, and the list wasn’t crazy.
“So I was fascinated both by the lack of real hard pushback, and then a list of names that didn’t come from just anywhere was proffered.”
