Former GOP strategist praises Biden as 'the only 2024 candidate worth considering'
08 November 2023
Some of former President Donald Trump's scathing critics — from "Real Time" host Bill Maher to Washington Post columnist and Never Trump conservative George Will — have been calling for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. If Biden is the Democratic nominee, Maher and Will fear, Trump will make a disastrous return to the White House in January 2025.
But The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a Never Trumper and former GOP strategist, has a very different viewpoint.
In an op-ed published on his Substack page on November 6, Wilson exalts Biden as the best option for defeating likely Republican nominee Trump in 2024.
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Wilson recalls that he was a "harsh critic" of Biden during the Barack Obama years.
"It was part of the gig in the GOP world," Wilson remembers. "Dismiss the good sides of any Democrat, mock and ridicule, amp up the bad.… It wasn't personal; it was the political style my generation, and those since, grew up in — always on, always fighting, and constantly feeding the base monster. Can you dig up old tweets of me from 2009 or 2012 raking Biden over the coals? Of course, you can."
But Wilson has since left the GOP because of Trumpism, which he regards as a dangerously authoritarian departure from traditional Reagan/Goldwater conservatism. Wilson, like many other Never Trumpers, supported Biden in 2020.
In his op-ed, Wilson describes Biden as "the only man ever to beat Donald Trump" and "the only 2024 candidate worth considering."
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"Man, moment and message made Biden the candidate of 2020," Wilson recalls. "Now, as Joe Biden struggles with a restive Democratic Party base — when are they not? — it's time to get serious. The polls are, admittedly, rough, but it's nothing some discipline, unity, and focus can't fix."
Wilson continues, "Donald Trump was way ahead in 2020, and his negatives are stratospheric. We know how to do this."
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Read Rick Wilson's full Substack article at this link.