Beyond Biden: Democrats must go big and bold to defeat bogeyman Trump. A two-woman ticket might do that.

Democrats at their best take risks: JFK, Carter, Clinton, Obama were out-of-the-box picks. In the wake of Biden's debate debacle and lawfare's collapse, the party of identity needs a new trick.

The dam of denial is slowly breaking as crestfallen, Trump-deranged Democrats realize that Sleepy Joe can’t beat their Orange bogeyman. White House palace intrigue has gotten surreal and sordid as congressional calls for Joe to resign increase, the First Family closes ranks, and the crack-addicted protector of Biden crime family secrets––convicted felon Hunter Biden––is brought in to punish leakers. Kim, Putin, and Xi, this is your cue.

Though visibly and ethically compromised, Mr. Biden miraculously won in 2020 because Democrats stacked the deck, by their admission, in his favor: Zuck Bucks, unilateral changes to state election laws, ballot harvesting, unsolicited mail-in ballots, hiding Joe from scrutiny, media, search, and social media censorship, direct and possibly criminal election interference by 51 intel spooks––all aided and abetted by Donald Trump’s aggro first debate performance and cretinous call to only vote in person and on Election Day. Democrats smartly rallied other Democratic contenders around their corrupt, schmaltzy, and enfeebled standard-bearer and ground out the win. It was a marvel of cynical Machiavellian realism.

Democrats are now at a generational crossroads. Joe’s not just “slippin’,” as the Wall Street Journal reported in a nod to Sollozzo from The Godfather. He’s crashing and burning. Party leaders know it. Their reliable media shils finally acknowledge it. Lady Macbeth, Jill Biden, lives it.

As Team Biden gaslights America about Joe’s mental acuity, 52% of likely voters say that dementia explains Joe’s horrible debate performance. 41% of Democrats say that Joe lacks the cognitive functionality to serve as President. One in three Democrats say Biden should drop out. Ouch!

Democrats went to the well one too many times. Rerunning Biden was always risky, contradicting Joe’s pledge that he’d be a one-term caretaker President. But the Bidens got greedy for power, privilege, and fame––Jill has been on Vogue’s cover three times, while genuine fashion icon Melania Trump never appeared once––and tuned out the naysayers, thinking they could bamboozle the base one last time. Now they are paying the price for their arrogance, as schadenfreude over the fall of the criminal cabal of Biden, Blinken, Brennan, Cheney, Clapper, Clinton (Hillary), Elias, Obama, Pelosi, and the 51 spooks who collectively did so much damage to this country in the name of “saving democracy” reaches sky-high levels.

In the latest CNN poll, Trump has a commanding six-point popular vote lead over Biden among likely voters. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has a nine-point lead among all voters. Even when they lose in the Electoral College, winning the popular vote has always been a perverse point of pride for Democrats, who’ve never quite grasped that we live in a republic. Losing the popular vote guarantees that Democrats will lose the Electoral College since Democrats routinely run up the popular vote score in deep blue California, Illinois, and New York, as GOP presidential candidates don’t seriously campaign in Democratic groupthink strongholds.

In a last-gasp attempt to still the waters, this Friday, Team Biden is putting the President on with state media hack George Stephanopoulos in hopes it will undo the horror Americans witnessed last Thursday. The interview will be staged to ensure that Biden looks his level best, further amplifying the Democrats’ credibility problem. Dems still haven’t gotten the memo: it’s not just that Joe is lost and frail; it’s that Democrats covered up his infirmity for four years, only dragging gramps out to speak from teleprompters or with friendly media. That Big Lie has now amplified all their other lies.

Assuming that Stephanopoulos’ interview doesn’t solve Joe’s or the Democrats’ credibility problem, what’s the party of the Hunter laptop cover-up, Trump/Russia collusion coax, FISAgate, the Steele Dossier, open borders, defund the police, and foreign influence-peddling supposed to do?

They should do what they always do when up against the wall: go big and bold. Philanderer-in-chief John F. Kennedy was a Catholic Brahmin war hero with the glamour of Camelot. Jimmy Carter was a clean-living Southern Baptist peanut farmer tasked with restoring integrity to the Oval Office after Nixon’s dark, cynical reign. Sex addict Bill Clinton was a Boomer brainiac with an everyman (and woman) touch. Barack Obama was the mixed-race son of academics whose empty vessel could be filled with vague nostrums of “hope and change.”

Joe Biden is none of those things. So, in the increasingly likely event of Joe’s political demise, which of these tax-the-rich hires can Democrats rally around?

Pete Buttigieg?

Hillary Clinton?

Alexandra Ocasio Cortez?

Kamala Harris?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr?

Amy Klobuchar?

Gavin Newsom?

Michelle Obama?

J.B. Pritzker?

Bernie Sanders?

Elizabeth Warren?

There are also below-the-radar options, from New Jersey Senator Cory Booker––with Crotty, a fan of L.A.’s Cafe Gratitude–– to measured former Tennessee congressman (and rare Democratic Centrist) Harold Ford, Jr., to Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who won reelection in a ruby red state that Trump carried in 2020 by 26 points. A Beshear/Ford ticket would harken back to the golden age of Clinton before the party was infected with obscurantist theologies from Critical Race Theory to Defund the Police to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), let alone pernicious maladies such as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and the Woke Mind Virus.

Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party is mostly about virtue signaling, policing speech, and random demarcations of identity rather than pragmatically engaging with the other side to do big bipartisan things for America: restoring order at the border, seriously tackling crime and homelessness, deporting illegal immigrant felons, finishing the wall, and resolving inflation through reduced federal spending.

Therefore, in this current Democratic climate of chimera over substance, with a nation increasingly divided by gender, my recommendation––as I’ve echoed on the CFR podcast––is to go all in on winning the women's vote. Double down on abortion rights, paid family leave, equal pay for equal work, gun control, countering sexism, and stopping femicide (a back door way to appear strong on the border). Activate suburban moms and urban riot grrrrlllls. Celebrate female empowerment. As Democrats smartly did in 1992 when they paired two Southerners (Clinton with Gore), this is about an historic sea change for America. Be bold, be new, be courageous. Rise above Trump’s pettiness and name-calling. Heck, ignore Trump altogether.

There are two ways to run this gambit. If Democrats are serious about winning big this cycle, they will somehow kick Kamala off the island and pair up their two female rock stars, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and Michelle Obama (who remains coy about running). But that move would unduly rankle their devoted base of black women and put their female rock stars in the problematic spot of stepping over the person in line to be the first black female President. For the party of identity, that’s no bueno.

So, here’s the path Democrats will ultimately land on, though they will refuse to credit the Crotty for seeing it before anyone else. If they want to minimize permanent party damage, poll better than Joe, and not get obliterated down the ballot, they need to pair the goofy, shameless, yet happy identity warrior princess Kamala Harris—who’s blithely unburdened by her rise far beyond her Peter Principle threshold of incompetence—with a serious can-do female running mate, whether Amy Klobuchar, Gretchen Whitmer, or, yes, Hillary Clinton. A Harris/Whitmer ticket would be the most daunting and problematic for Trump, possibly forcing him to make an unforced error by picking polarizing NeoCon Nikki Haley instead of gliding to low-key victory based on Democratic disarray and failure. It could also ensure that Democrats hang onto Michigan, where Whitmer is governor, and possibly Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the race will be close due to Whitmer’s presence. A Harris/Whitmer ticket also has the optics just right for this dangerously vacuous Tik-Tok era: “We’re just two kicky chicks running the world, baby.” We know Kamala can boogie.

Please realize that we are talking about a corrupt and deceitful party that has been an abject failure on Afghanistan, the border, crime, inflation, and their signature issue of climate change. Despite the $7.5 billion allocated in 2021, only seven EV charging stations have been built. They have to change the subject away from their policy failures, their “saving democracy” whopper–– the Democratic Party of disinformation and deep state election interference remains the real “threat to democracy”––and their backfiring lawfare against Trump and, for a few key months, be sane, stable, and forward-looking to eke out a pyrrhic victory until the big guns come in 2028 after Karen Bass’s LA Olympics.

You got this, Dems!