Rachel Marsden: Here’s who should replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket

PARIS – A whopping 51 million viewers tuned into CNN for the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, probably in many cases for the same reason that folks enjoy watching NASCAR races. There’s always a risk of a spectacular crash.But what happened here was that the drivers spun out and crashed, exploded into a ball of fire, got back into another car and kept driving, and then did the same thing over and over again – for 99 minutes.Trump’s debate prep must have consisted solely of memorizing a handful of superlatives like “greatest”, “best”, “strongest”, “largest.” It’s up to the opposing candidate to hold him to specifics. But Biden wasn’t up to the task. He couldn’t even nail down details of his own golf game, accusing Trump of exaggerating his golfing talent and then bragging about his own six handicap during the time that he was vice president. Or is it eight? Who knows? Not Biden, apparently.“Look, I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a six,” Biden told Trump. “That’s the biggest lie that he’s a six handicap,” Trump retorted. “I was eight handicap,” Biden then replied.This is the guy who’s facing off with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the world stage, in front of whom I’ve spent countless hours in press conferences while he rattles off detailed facts and figures for hours, with no notes, on everything from the economy to national defense and foreign trade? No, Biden isn’t actually going toe to toe with Putin.The same American media and political establishment who kept publicly insisting that Biden was not only competent but excelling in running the country, and who are now back-pedaling like crazy now that they’ve been mugged by reality in broad daylight for the entire world to see, have also been blatantly lying about who’s really running the country.America under Biden is arguably the most pure product ever of the American permanent establishment bureaucracy. And Trump is the exact opposite. He spent his entire presidency dragging his disputes with the so-called “deep state” (which is really just another name for the bureaucratic class that’s impervious to election cycles or presidents) into the street for one bare-knuckle fight after another.And that’s the real contest in this year’s race: establishment globalists versus anti-establishment nationalists. The right versus left ideological paradigm only really applies now once the establishment has been eliminated from the race. The latest French national election is a prime example of that. But America isn’t there yet. It doesn’t have the luxury of fiddling with right-left window dressing when the globalist bulldozer is still revving up outside the house.Biden’s presidency has been a classic globalist one, promoting the notion of worldwide American intervention over domestic priorities that serve the average American citizen above the special interests that most profit from fiddling around on the global chessboard. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing businesses abroad. But it’s quite another thing to achieve competitive advantages by passing through costly military conflict at the expense of the taxpayer.So if Biden is to eventually be replaced, his substitute should be someone who embodies the deep-state to which the Democrats routinely cater. Not California Governor Gavin Newsom, who doesn’t even seem like someone that they take seriously. Maybe because California is such a disaster that even Washington fixtures stay out of Newsom’s blast radius. Not current Vice President Kamala Harris, whose existence they seem to have spent an entire four years ignoring, along with the rest of America.They need someone with national and international brand name recognition, but also linked to the Biden brand. The only one who comes to mind in ticking all the boxes is current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who’s spent most of Biden’s term crisscrossing the globe, meeting with world leaders while Biden catches up on his napping. He’s the one giving speeches that echo the American establishment’s talking points – and, unlike Biden, not reading aloud teleprompter notes that appear on-screen in front of him, like “last name” and “pause”.He also used to write those speeches for other high-level establishment figures in the State Department.Blinken, who speaks beautifully eloquent and fluent French, and was schooled and raised here in France, is just 62 years old and has been hanging around the Washington bureaucracy since 1994, serving in Democrat (Clinton) and Republican (Bush) administrations. He’s the Washington establishment writ large, and would effectively cut out the middle-man and allow Democrats to vote directly for the bureaucracy, so selecting him to replace Biden would be about as much of a “no-brainer” as Biden’s debate performance.Arguably, no one would better incarnate the Democratic side in the main clash that exists today between today’s Democratic and Republican bases. And as a member of the Biden administration since Day One, Blinken could certainly speak to Team Biden’s record. He also has the mental agility to fact-check Trump on the fly, which is obviously something that media moderators were reluctant to do. Not to make excuses for them, but that’s supposed to be the job of the other side in a contradictory debate.A Trump-Blinken showdown would be a legitimate matchup that would give the American people a real ideological choice that reflects the current reality. And it wouldn’t even be too late to switch out a few letters on the campaign material from “Biden” to “Blinken” before the ink dries.(Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com.)©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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