In an interview with podcaster Charlie LeDuff on Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a bold prediction about the 2020 election. Discussing the course of the election and the effect that the coronavirus crisis would have on the contours of politics, Carlson said that he would be very surprised if former Vice President Joe Biden wound up securing the Democratic Party’s nomination this summer.
While Biden is being treated as (and acting like) the presumptive nominee, the truth is that the nomination is still officially up for grabs. The problems, however, are numerous. For one thing, many states have postponed their primaries indefinitely. For another thing, challenger Bernie Sanders is well behind Biden in the delegate count and he’s facing an unfavorable map for the rest of the primaries, even if those primaries were to go off without a hitch. For those reasons and others, it seems almost academic to declare Biden the de facto winner.
But Carlson isn’t buying it.
“I am utterly convinced, and would bet money, that Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee on election day. I just don’t believe that. I really don’t,” Carlson said.
“What did you say?” asked LeDuff, startled.
“I sincerely and totally believe that Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee on election day,” Carlson continued. “I don’t believe that.”
“How does that math work?” one of LeDuff’s co-hosts asked.
“Well, the math doesn’t work, but it’s not about math, it’s about will,” Carlson explained. “So the Democratic Party is intent on taking power, period, period, and they mean it, and they’re willing to do kind of whatever they think works. I mean that’s demonstrable.
“Biden is not prepared,” Carlson said. “He can’t beat Trump or lead the country. He shouldn’t be working still. I’m not being mean. I know him. I’ve always liked him. But that’s true. And so, those are two trains traveling toward each other at high speed. Two competing imperatives. We’ve got to win, but we’ve got a guy who can’t win. Therefore, they’re gonna replace him.”
Carlson said that Biden’s cognitive decline was obvious to anyone watching, and that it hadn’t escaped the attention of Democratic Party operatives.
“This is not the guy I’ve known, and you can ask anybody who knows him or has watched him,” Carlson said. “This is not him. He’s a completely different person, and he’s in decline and I feel bad about it. That’ll be me someday. I hope somebody loves me enough to not let me run for president.”
Carlson said that if he had to bet on who the party would choose to replace Biden, he would put his money on the New York governor.
“If I had to bet I would think Andrew Cuomo would be the most likely to replace Biden,” he said.
Like we said, this is a pretty bold prediction, and we haven’t heard any whisperings of Democratic Party leaders trying to make such a move. It seems like it would be potentially disastrous. Then again, running Biden could also be disastrous, so they’re stuck in a pretty dark situation.
Cuomo, eh? Maybe. Maybe.
Then again, there may be a woman in Chappaqua, NY, watching Biden’s bumbling campaign and quietly developing a scheme of her own.
This year’s just weird enough that it could happen.
