First-term Democratic governor of Maryland Wes Moore has been one of my favorite punching bags on this blog, and today just gave me another chance at firing some shots at him. I spend a lot of time criticizing Democrats on this blog, my favorite targets being presidential hopefuls that I would like to see as far away from the Democratic nomination as possible, and that may make me seem like an angry, un-pragmatic liberal. Let me be clear: Every democrat I make a proverbial dump on is better than any current Republican office holder, and I would go to the polls to vote for every single one of them. But I could spend countless hours and write dozens of articles about the crazy Republicans on the right like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, but I don't think it really adds to an important political dialogue. We all know people like Marjorie are bad, and hearing that message echo off a thousand walls doesn't change a thing.
However, we are only four years away from the start of the 2028 election cycle, and there is a 100% chance that Joe Biden will not be running for President. Since 1976, no Democrat without the name of Clinton-Gore or Obama-Biden has won the popular vote. The youngest American to have participated in an election won by a Democrat (in the popular vote) other than a Clinton, Gore, Obama, or Biden is now 65 years old. The party is destined to move into a new direction with fresh faces. We have to get it right. It's important that we take the next four years to scrutinize the crap out of every Democrat who even peeps out the word "Nevada" or "South Carolina."
This morning, three-term senator and accomplished 79 year-old legislator Ben Cardin announced that he will be retiring at the end of his term, meaning that the seat is wide open in the 2024 election. Why is this such bad news for Governor Moore? Well, it has to do with math: Wes Moore just won his election as governor in the 2022 midterms, and if he were to run for the open seat just two years later, it would reek of an ambitious politician only concerned about his title, not serving his people and doing the job. But if Cardin had decided to stay in the Senate for just one more term, and serve until the age of 86, his later retirement would leave the seat open for grabs in the 2030 midterms, which would magically place the election for replacing Cardin at the end of Wes Moore's two terms in the governor's mansion. Moore could run for the safe blue seat as an accomplished two-term governor and keep the seat for as long as he wants. Maryland limits its governors to two terms - that's why Republican grifter and public corruption magnet Larry Hogan wasn't able to run in 2022. Unless Moore finds another job upgrade, he will be without a job in 2031. And that's often a problem for someone wanting to run for President.
As I've said before, I don't trust Wes Moore. I understand that he's very smart and very qualified for his job, but he reeks of an elite scumbag grifter. While the economy was reeling in the wake of the '08 recession, Moore spent five years on Wall Street at Deutsche and Citi as an investment banker. Even worse, he created a semi-scam company called BridgeEdu that claimed to help students transition to college for a "small" fee of $500. If you're ever feeling angry about how "college prep" has turned into one of the biggest grift jobs in America, you can probably thank people like Wes Moore. In a C-SPAN interview, he called himself "fiscally conservative" and "socially moderate." He's been known to embellish his life story, and although his exaggerations are far from achieving DEF-CON George Santos, he gives me bad vibes.
Now, my homemade meme slightly exaggerates the implications of Cardin's resignation on Moore's career. Yes, it is true that cancer-survivor Jamie Raskin will probably scoop up this seat in '24 and remove it from Moore's grasp. But Governor Moore has plenty of other chances to advance up the political totem pole. Although I am cheering mightily against it, he has a strong chance of winning the Democratic nomination in '28, especially with black voters in South Carolina getting the first crack in the primary. If a white woman like Gretchen Whitmer or Katie Porter were to win the Democratic nomination, putting an extremely smart black man with military experience on the bottom of the ticket would certainly sweeten the deal, and his foreign policy experience while serving as a White House fellow to Condy Rice would make him a great asset as a policy maker in a Whitmer administration. I wouldn't really have any problem with that - if it helps the Democrats win, then I'll take it.
And if Democrats stay in the White House for the rest of the decade, a Rhodes Scholar foreign policy expert like Moore will have many opportunities to slip into a valuable cabinet position, like Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. So it's not over for Moore. But today was a big speed bump on his road to higher office. I'm almost always willing to change my mind about politicians I don't like, and if Moore can prove himself to be a true fighter for the working class, rather than the over-ambitious elite grifter I think he is, I would be happy to see him advance higher. But for now, Moore's not the "real deal". He's the real heel.
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