by Frank Holmes, reporter
As Democrats continue to question whether President Joe Biden should seek a second term in the White House, a lot of the party rank-and-file want a familiar face to return.
A new poll finds that, if the 80-year-old president decides not to run for reelection, Hillary Clinton could run a strong race for the nomination.
The poll shows Hillary is in second place. Strongly.
A Premise poll taken last month found, without Biden in the 2024 primaries, Hillary Clinton comes in a threatening second with 19 percent support.
The only Democrat ahead of Clinton is Vice President Kamala Harris, who comes in first with 29 percent — but Harris is failing, badly. She can’t keep her foot out of her mouth, and the latest Los Angeles Times poll showed that she has one of the highest net negative poll ratings of anyone in the administration, including Joe Biden.
Biden is dealing with his own polling woes. He has a net negative rating of seven percent, but 12 percent more people view Kamala Harris negatively than positively.
To make things sweeter for Hillary, she and Harris leave the rest of the Democratic pack in the dust.
Only two other figures had double-digit ratings. Third place belongs to Pete Buttigieg, the controversial secretary of transportation who has had a string of failures including the toxic train derailment resulting in a mushroom cloud over East Palestine, Ohio. He had 11 percent support… and it’s surely fallen since then.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom rated fourth, attracting the support of 10 percent of Democrats. But Newsom isn’t popular in his own state. 70 percent of Californians don’t want Gavin Newsom to run for president.
California voters know him best, and they say he shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.
Newsom’s record of rolling blackouts, high crime, and a cost of living that’s higher than inflation has U-hauls lined up and rolling toward all points east. Although he’s not yet officially announced a presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already started campaigning against Newsom, saying America has to choose between Florida or California.
The rest of the candidates, who rate in single digits, include New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (eight percent), followed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (six percent), twice-failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (five percent), Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (two percent), and an unpopular candidate from 2020: Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (one percent).
Pritzker announced this week that he has absolutely ruled out running for president in 2024, so his two points are up for grabs.
Of course, Hillary Clinton told CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell last September that she would never run for president again… but then, she had promised in 2000 not to run for president before finishing her first term in the Senate.
“I am intent upon being the best senator that I can be,” she said at the time. “That is what I want to do.”
Of course, she obviously wasn’t content to remain in the Senate. She followed that campaign promise with two failed presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016, and two autobiographies about why she lost.
It’s no secret most Democrats do not want Joe Biden to run for a second term. Only 12 percent of Democrats think Joe Biden should lead the Democratic Party, according to an AP-NORC poll last month. And only 37 percent of Democrats say Biden should even think about a second term.
Some in the party think this may be Hillary Clinton’s moment…and despite what she says, Hillary may be one of them.
The former secretary of state took a subtle dig at Harris in late December during an interview with a feminist website called The 19th.
She gave Harris “high marks” for her role in helping Joe Biden… but she undermined Harris’ claim to fame: being a historical figure.
“It’s always hard to be the first,” Hillary said. “I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
Hillary Clinton also said Harris would be “well-positioned” to take the 2024 presidential nomination… at least, until she faces “a hot spotlight.”
“I think she would certainly start off ahead. But you know, as I know better than most, campaigns are funny, funny things,” Hillary Clinton said. “So, we’ll see how well she can run, based on her record and the accomplishments that she helped President Biden achieve.”
That’s another way of saying Joe Biden’s runaway inflation, $5 gas prices, and uncontrolled border are Kamala Harris’ record, too.
Hillary Clinton has already raised those issues. “Nobody wants open borders … but nobody wants inhumane, terrible treatment of human beings either,” Hillary Clinton told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough last fall.
The people closest to the Clintons think Hillary is chomping at the bit for a third presidential race and possible rematch against Donald Trump. “Hillary is just dusting off Bill‘s playbook that I wrote for him and applying it herself this year,” said political strategist Dick Morris, a former adviser to the Clinton administration in the White House and in Arkansas.
Another former advsor, pollster Doug Schoen, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed last January laying out “Hillary Clinton’s 2024 Election Comeback.”
Based on their writing, we can assume Hillary’s return to the campaign trail has been in the works for a long time.
“The Clintons are like herpes,” said comedian and Last Man Standing star Tim Allen. “Just when you think they’re gone, they show up again.”
And now, just in time for the 2024 presidential primaries, guess who’s back?
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”