Groundhog Mitch

Will he see his shadow this time?

All of this has the chattering class wondering if another Democrat should pick up the mantle. A half-dozen recently published lists of possible candidates — should Biden withdraw — all include Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 41, who retains support among younger voters; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, 52, who won a state that backed Trump; California Gov. Gavin Newsom, 56, who has money, popularity and a growing national profile; and Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, who is the first woman in history to hold that office and is arguably the default choice.

So: What about Landrieu?

He has spent the last two years traveling tens of thousands of miles around the country. It's a role that has involved helping state and local officials, of both parties, quickly navigate the bureaucracy to get the federal money to start often long hoped-for infrastructure projects — not a bad launching pad for a campaign.

Of all the speculative lists of possible Biden replacements, Landrieu, 63, was mentioned in only one, in what amounted to a footnote.

While Landrieu has given no indication he's interested — and there's no way he could do so right now, without sabotaging Biden — five years ago he was openly flirting with a run.

 Back then, Landrieu said he would never challenge Biden, and presumably that rule still applies.

Okay, well, consider the appearance of this article an "indication he's interested."  That's how this sort of thing works. Mitch was extremely close to doing it last time around.  Like, really close. A media whisper campaign had been dropping his name into the rumor mill as early as 2017. By mid-2018 the whisperers were clearing their throats and speaking more loudly.  It came so close, in fact, that Mitch's  friends at the Bayou Brief  even coordinated an announcement day campaign puff feature that got posted prematurely and then quickly taken down.  I happened to see it come across the RSS and read it in the meantime. I hope everyone involved is still embarrassed. 

Anyway today's article doesn't mention this but we read a few weeks ago that Mitch's former deputy mayor and longtime political operative Ryan Berni has taken a job working for Biden 2024.   In 2020 Berni was one of several familiar soulless Louisiana Democratic Party professional assholes who ended up collecting a few checks from the money bomb set off by former New York City Mayor/billionaire Michael Bloomberg's spectacular failure of a campaign flame out. One assumes they were all available to jump on board with Bloomberg because their schedules were cleared for Mitch.

Four years later there's an incumbent Democratic President on the slate. That's where all the dirty money is. And so that's where characters where Berni are going to be. For now, anyway. But that Democratic President is looking shakier every day.  And maybe some of that money is looking for other places to go. The appearance of fresh rumors in the press would indicate someone is at least hedging bets on it.