Are Democrats Doomed to Nominate Biden Again-

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is not interested in running for president – ever – she said Tuesday...

Whitmer has repeatedly said her focus is on serving Michigan as governor for the next four years.

But in a Tuesday interview with the Free Press in her Lansing office in the Romney Building, she went further than that. Asked to look beyond 2024, and whether she could ever see herself running for president, she replied: “I don’t foresee that... The lure of Washington, D.C. has not been something that has ever drawn my interest or attention...”

Last week this column noted that the unexpectedly strong midterm showing by Democrats could actually harm the party’s 2024 prospects by entrenching Mr. Biden as the leader of the party. This week what’s striking is the speed at which the potential field is already being winnowed. Weirdly, this is occurring as enthusiasm for another Biden campaign remains well in check. Kate Bennett at CNN reports on former First Lady Michelle Obama :

“You know, I, I – I will have to see,” Obama said when asked if she hoped Biden would run again during an... ABC News special that aired Sunday.

Writing in Politico this week, Bill Scher offered advice on how to mount primary challenges against Mr. Biden and mentioned some of last week’s exit polling results:

... not only was President Joe Biden’s job approval number a limp 44 percent, a whopping 67 percent of respondents don’t want him to run again. That includes nearly half of the Democrats polled.

A chipper Biden said after the midterms that he intends to stand for reelection. Yet many Democratic lawmakers also appear to side with the skittish wing of the party’s rank-and-file, according to POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin, who reported that their “dread about 2024 extends from the specter of nominating an octogenarian with dismal approval ratings to the equally delicate dilemma of whether to nominate his more unpopular vice president or pass over the first Black woman in the job.”

Mr. Scher described options for those who “want to throw Biden from the train,” including the intriguing possibilities for state politicians:

Unlike members of the Senate or House, who have to vote against party-backed legislation to develop any anti-establishment bona fides, outside-the-Beltway governors have more latitude to lambaste “Washington” without getting wounded in the ideological crossfire.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer may attract fresh buzz after comfortably winning reelection in her swing state Tuesday.

The buzz was already audible last week and then E.J. Dionne celebrated the Michigan’s governor’s re-election in the Washington Post:

Whitmer stayed true to the very practical agenda she ran on four years ago, highlighted by her sassy, back-to-basics slogan: “Fix the damn roads.” She raised that battle cry again in her victory speech while renewing pledges to restore safe drinking water (in response to the contamination of Flint’s water supply) and to improve health care and education.

After much ink-spilling since Trump’s election over the loss of blue-collar industrial jobs, she joined Biden and Democrats elsewhere in describing a new manufacturing future involving making more electric cars, “semi-conductors and clean energy right here in Michigan.” Watch this theme: How to build a new economy is the big issue of the next decade.

Now the Whitmer option already appears to be off the Democratic table. Perhaps this is not just about President Biden’s strengthened grip on party leadership. There’s also the fact that while Ms. Whitmer may be adept at offering sassy descriptions of future jobs, Michigan’s current jobs, much like its roads, are not what they could be. James Hohman writes for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy:

Gov. Whitmer instituted the strictest lockdown of any governor during the pandemic; 32% of all businesses were subject to a government-mandated closure, far higher than the 19% national average.

Unsurprisingly, Michigan jobs declined faster than in other states, and the state lost 1,053,300 jobs from February 2020 to April 2020, a 23.7% loss. Jobs in the nation as a whole were down 14.4%.

Since then, 23 states have fully recovered from their pandemic job losses. Michigan is still down 94,500 jobs from pre-pandemic levels. That’s a 2.1% decrease, 7th worst in the nation.

The state has also lately been lagging the national averages in economic growth and income growth.

Yet despite her faults, Gov. Whitmer is clearly more popular than the president in a key Midwestern battleground where she has now convincingly won two straight statewide elections. Wouldn’t most Democratic voters want to see her compete nationwide?

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Chip Dickson.)