Monday's Absurdity of the Day: Kamala and Preacher Pete on the Same Ticket?

CNN Says Get Ready For It

In a CNN opinion piece that provides proof that there are no serious people in the entirety of the Democrat Party anymore, a teacher at Columbia University writes of his dream ticket for the 2024 Democrat nomination, and boy is it a doozy.

This teacher, one Lincoln Mitchell, concludes that the ticket that would check the most boxes in the Democrat Party’s very long identity politics is one made up of Kamala Harris, the most unpopular vice president in modern times, and Preacher Pete Buttigieg, the failed mayor of a small Indiana town who got the Transportation Secretary’s job because he once rode a bus.

No, really, I swear I do not make this stuff up. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Mitchell’s unintentionally hilarious piece:

The next presidential election is three years away. Recent reports about early concern over whether President Joe Biden will run for reelection in 2024 and about tension between potential 2024 rivals, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Vice President Kamala Harris are, to some extent, standard Washington gossip that can be safely ignored. Still, there may be something more than that.

Buttigieg is clearly very ambitious, ran an impressive presidential campaign in 2020 and has only strengthened his political skills since then. Harris, as the vice president, is a leading contender to be the face of the post-Joe Biden Democratic Party. Each may see the other as standing in their way as 2024 approaches. This is particularly important because the 79-year-old Biden, despite wisely sending signals that he will seek reelection in 2024, may decide that he doesn't want to run three years from now.

[End]

Now, if that nonsense about the Sock Puppet “wisely sending signals” hasn’t already thrown you into a fit of uncontrolled guffawing, there’s even more sophomoric silliness later on:

A primary campaign between Harris and Buttigieg could pit two key Democratic constituencies against each other: African Americans, particularly African American women, and LGBTQ voters. The impact of that fight would be even worse if it began in 2023 and took over the second half of Biden's current term.

Fortunately, this is a problem that can be easily solved without either politician having to give up anything lasting. Harris and Buttigieg instead could agree that, if Biden does not run again, they would run together in 2024, with Harris the nominee for president and Buttigieg for vice-president. This could put an end to whatever feuding exists between them now, while giving the Democratic Party a very strong ticket in 2024 that would seem like a natural continuation of Biden's first term.

[End]

Why, hey, they could just bury the old hatchet and just agree to run together. It’ll be just like in The Three Amigos, when Morty, the character played by John Lovitz, describes Harry Flugelman’s planned “Cochise” picture to the Amigos:

“You meet Cochise. At first you think he’s a terrible guy. You fight, then you get to know him. You come to respect each other, and at the end of the picture (claps hands) you’re friends!”

You bet! And later on, in a bar in a dusty Mexican town, they can join arms and sing “My Little Buttercup” before taking tequila shots, which the bartender assures them is “like beer.”

It’s all so simple when a simpleton like Morty - or, say, Lincoln Mitchell - is explaining it all to us in kindergarten terms, which is no doubt how he teaches his classes at Columbia.

Good lord. CNN must find these people out on the street.

Look, here’s reality:

• The Sock Puppet is not going to be running in 2024;

• He only claimed to be considering doing so in order to avoid immediately being seen as the lame duck president he has been since Day 1;

• The battle for the Democrat Party’s 2024 nomination is going to be one of the nastiest political wars we have ever witnessed as a country. It will be a knock-down, drag-out war involving not just Harris and Buttigieg, but also party luminaries like Lieawatha and Gretchen Whitmer and Stacey Abrams (do not doubt me on this) and Gavin Newsom and probably Irish Bob O’Rourke again because he won’t have anything better to do after getting his ass kicked by Greg Abbott next year and probably at least half a dozen other candidates I’m not thinking of right now;

• The thought that Harris and Preacher Pete are going to light up the peace pipe and reach across the sweat lodge fire to decide this nomination and form up the party’s ticket together is just the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long, long time, probably since the last opinion piece I read by Stephen Hayes.

Go read the rest of Mr. Mitchell’s nonsense if you must, but fair warning: You will likely drop 3 IQ points for every additional paragraph you read of this drivel.

That is all.