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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Now They're Pushing McAuliffe?

Today I saw the third and fourth article in the last week pushing the possible presidential candidacy of Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe in 2020.  Wow!  It seems pretty clear that this is not spontaneous, but rather it is a coordinated move by McAuliffe and supporters to get his name out there in preparation for 2020.  I get it that McAuliffe is one of the few Democrats still occupying a governor's mansion in a major state who could reasonably seek support for the presidency.  Jerry Brown holds the governor's seat in California, but he's also extremely old.  A Brown run in 2020 would be like watching an ad for arthritis, memory aids and in-home nursing care.  Then there's NY governor Andrew Cuomo, but he's lucky just to avoid indictment by 2020.  Then there's the Pennsylvania Democrat, but it's looking more and more as if he will be defeated in 2018.  That leaves McAuliffe.

The problem with Terry McAuliffe is that he has a past.  He has been ensnared in nearly every one of the Clinton scandals of the past three decades.  On top of that, he was allegedly involved in a scheme to sell visas for settling in the USA to Chinese buyers.  No one has ever called McAuliffe "Mr. Clean".  Would the Democrats really want to run another candidate who can be attacked as corrupt?  Would they really want to run another candidate from the Clinton machine?  It's their choice, but I doubt that it would make sense to pick McAuliffe.

This little boomlet for the Virginia governor is just another reminder of how few possible candidates the Democrats actually have in 2020.  Who knows, maybe they'll bring back Hillary and she can run by talking about 2016.

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