As the calls for Joe Biden to exit the 2024 presidential race continue, so to have the scenarios for what happens after that.
Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, offered what would be a West Wing-esque path for the party.
In an op ed in The New York Times on Sunday, Sorkin wrote that “there’s something the Democrats can do that would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice. So here’s my pitch to the writers’ room: The Democratic Party should pick a Republican.”
“At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney.”
Romney, a Republican, is retiring from the Senate after this term, but has said that he is not voting for his party’s nominee, Donald Trump.
Sorkin’s call for Romney as the nominee was greeted with some ridicule on social media, as too much of a bit of fan fiction, but he defended the idea as “a clear and powerful demonstration that this election isn’t about what our elections are usually about it, but about stopping a deranged man from taking power.”
“Surely Mr. Romney, who doesn’t have to be introduced to voters, would peel off enough Republican votes to win, probably by a lot,” Sorkin wrote. “The double haters would be turned into single haters and the Nikki Haley voters would have somewhere to go, Ms. Haley having disqualified herself when she endorsed the leader of an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government.”
The latest senator to call for Biden to withdraw is Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) who, in Sunday show interviews, called for the president to “pass the torch.” He told Face the Nation, “Before the convention, I believe there could be an open primary process, and let the cream rise.” He singled out two Democratic governors in neighboring states, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, as “rising stars.”
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), though, said that he still supported Biden.
“He is still in this race. He will be our nominee if he stays in the race,” Clyburn said. “And I think all of us should look for ways to coalesce around that candidacy.”
Sorkin wrote in his essay, “Part of the wish fulfillment of ‘The West Wing’ was that oratory can be persuasive. So Barack Obama could come forth at the Democratic convention next month in Chicago and remind us, once again, that we’re not red states and blue states but the United States by full-throatedly endorsing his old rival. And Mr. Romney could make the case that the Democrats are putting country before party in ways that the MAGA movement will not, and announce his bipartisan cabinet picks at the convention as well.”
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