Hints, flirts, and intimations

The 2024 Election Campaign is underway.    

Candidates are planning their moves but pretending they aren't.

People who hold a current office might create an impatient successor and divide loyalties among supporters and donors if it were clear they were seeing another office. Democrats don't want to offend Biden by appearing to be overeager heirs at a hospice. Whatever Democratic aspirants do is inevitably a reflection on Kamala Harris, and therefore on Black females, whose spokespeople say Democrats owe them big time.This is poker, not chess. No one knows what cards people hold, including the people holding them. It is Harris' turn if Biden dies in office, but if he doesn't, there are no turns.

Michael Bennet, a Senator from Colorado, is nearly invisible for now. He emails me every Sunday. I saw him up close in New Hampshire in 2019 and got on his lists. Talking to reporters he quietly tapped his index finger on a table to emphasize a point. I asked him if that was all the passion he had. He said he thought that was passionate. A TV reporter repeated my question: "Does the political environment really want another soft-spoken moderate?" Bennet thinks so, and he makes a virtue of it:

I believe I am more the opposite of Donald Trump of anyone in this race. I believe that for our democracy to work, we need to create a broad coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

Bennet, talking with reporters in New Hampshire

Bennet is 57, and a graduate from Wesleyan where his father was college president, and Yale Law School. He had managed investments for a billionaire and then was Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. He is a young Boomer, not really the next generation, but young compared to current Democratic leaders. 2024 is his best chance at the presidency. If he wins re-election in November he is positioned to take the role of non-firebrand candidate. He will be the smarter, more-articulate, younger, Biden-type center-left Democrat.

Elizabeth Warren is running for re-election and she is presenting herself as a spokesperson for Democrats. She is high drama compared to Bennet. She writes me three or four times a week on hot issues. She is "deeply troubled" by the Supreme Court, she wants to "fight back" on Roe v. Wade, she wants to "recommit ourselves to rooting out systemic racism in every aspect of our economy and society." She presents emotions of indignation, anger, resentment. She also presents a soft side in her current email. She switches from Harvard professor and U.S. Senator to a Oklahoma girl raised in poverty who never forgot her roots. On Father's Day she her email included this:

After my mother died, I called [my Daddy] every night. Most weekends, we watched sports together, with Daddy in Oklahoma and me in Massachusetts, and we called back and forth on the phone after a really good (or bad) play.

I wanted to keep him company, and I wanted to hear his voice.

He taught me to dream big.

She is 73. She looks and acts much younger. She says she isn't running for president. 

Gavin Newsom is 54 years old, Governor of California and former Lieutenant Governor and San Francisco Mayor. He survived a recall effort in 2021 and is running for re-election this year. He is considered a political moderate in California. 

Gavin Newsom made an unmistakable opening move in a presidential campaign with a 30-second TV ad running in Florida, taunting DeSantis. It was a schoolboy jostle in the hallway. Nyah! Nyah! California is better than Florida!  It was paid for by his California re-election campaign. Like all other commentary on the ad, people observed that it was a signal. An NBC news announcer reported:

While the ad was paid for by the Newsom's 2022 re-election campaign, it is fueling speculation that Newsom is gearing up for a potential presidential run, so far Newsom has said he has no interest in running for president.

J. B. Pritzker is a billionaire. That itself is a signal. Billionaires feel entitled to be president. He is also the governor of Illinois. He spoke to Democrats in New Hampshire and opined that it was "certainly possible" that Biden would face primary opposition. That, too, is a signal. He told reporters, "For me, I’m focused on my reelection and what it is I can do for the people of Illinois."  Chris Christie lost weight in preparation for his 2016 presidential campaign and Mike Pompeo has recently lost weight for whatever he plans to do this year. Pritzker has not. That also means something.

Twitter fans of comedian Jon Stewart urged that he run. He responded, "Well, no." But that is what everyone says now.

I will keep watching.

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