CNN panelists appeared baffled by the certainty with which analyst Bakari Sellers claimed that President Joe Biden was likely to face a challenger going into the 2024 Democratic primary election.
While anchors Don Lemon and Kaitlan Collins seemed to agree with part of Sellers’ assessment — namely that Biden might decide against taking on the rigors of another campaign — they were less convinced that the Democratic Party would push other serious contenders to the forefront if he was still running.
WATCH:
Bakari Sellers says he thinks President Biden will have to go through primaries if he decides to run for reelection https://t.co/Mfs5sPiWkl pic.twitter.com/sjn8g6n9RC
— CNN (@CNN) November 10, 2022
Noting that President Biden has not wavered from his initial claim — that he intends “to run” for re-election in 2024 — analyst Paul Begala added, “Why wouldn’t he? You have to ask somebody else, I think he’s doing a great job. I’m a – kind of a Biden guy, I like what he’s doing.”
Begala went on to say that there had been “a lot of emerging new stars” in the Democratic Party, however, suggesting that if Biden were to bow out, the party had enough depth to work around that.
“Why wouldn’t he is because of the toil of the campaign,” Sellers began, noting that COVID had actually taken away some of the typical campaign pressures because it allowed Biden to avoid a lot of the ground-game staples that previous and future campaigns would likely require. “I mean, the campaign is a monster in itself.”
“I’m not saying that he can’t do it,” Seller continued. “The question he has to answer is, does he want to go through that, and go through, you know, primary debates? Because he’s going to be primaried. That’s a fact. That, we’re new age Democrats. Now, I’m going to support him in that primary, but he’s going be …”
“You think he’s going to get primaried?” Collins asked.
“Of course!” Sellers was adamant.
“By a serious candidate?” Begala appeared unconvinced.
“Did Hillary Clinton get primaried?” Sellers offered.
“Hillary wasn’t an incumbent …” Begala protested.
“She wasn’t an incumbent president,” Collins agreed.
“It doesn’t even matter if the candidate is serious or not. There’s going to be somebody …” Sellers tried again.
Begala continued to push back, saying that former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton hadn’t been primaried when they were incumbent presidents.
“There’s going to be somebody, there’s going to be somebody,” Sellers insisted. “This is, this is not Bill Clinton or Barack Obama’s Democratic Party anymore. I wish it was. There are a lot of, there are a lot of us who are going to support Joe Biden.”
“But who would primary him?” Collins pressed.
“I feel firm in the belief that he’ll get primaried from the Left,” Sellers said, arguing that Biden was likely to face a challenge from the far Left, from someone who felt that his policies had not gone far enough.
Sellers is not the only one exploring the possibility that the Democrats could put up a candidate who is not Joe Biden in 2024 — three weeks ahead of Tuesday’s midterms, The Washington Post put out a top-ten ranked list of potential Democratic candidates — and while Biden was ranked first, the list also included Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Vice President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).