Look Who's Running for President!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Though we are now less that a year away from the first local and regional contests for President of the United States, it still feels a bit on the early side of things.  After all, Joe Biden just completed his first two years in the White House less than two months ago - the midway point of his first, and perhaps only, term as out nation's leader.

But early or not, there are already five announced candidates who seem to be chomping at the bit to relieve Biden of his political burdens.  According to the website, Ballotpedia, four Republicans and one Democrat have already thrown their hats into the presidential ring, and the process has been going on since November 11th of last year.

Here's the up-to-date rundown:

• Corey Stapleton, a former Secretary of State in Montana, became the first official presidential candidate for the 2024 presidential election when he announced his candidacy on November 11, 2022.  Stapleton is running as a Republican.
• Number two on the list of those who have already announced is a man who needs to get used to being second.  Former President Donald Trump, also a Republican, announced four days after Stapleton, on November 15, 2022, that he was running to get his old job back.
• There were no announcements of candidacies in December of 2022 or January of 2023, but on Valentine's Day (February 14th) former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley officially joined the race - as a Re[publican.  Donald Trump, who is never slow with a personal insult, quickly labeled Haley as "very ambitious."
• A week after Nikki Haley's entry into the presidential sweepstakes, another Republican, Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and political commentator, also joined the race.
• And finally, on February 23, 2023, Marianne Williamson, a Democratic dark horse, announced that she would be in the fray.   Not being familiar with the woman who would dare to challenge Joe Biden from within the tight confines of his own political party, I looked her up and discovered that she had previously been one of many Democratic candidates who had sought the nomination in 2020, but she had dropped out of the race after a couple of months.  Williamson, an author in the lucrative "self-help" field and an acolyte of Oprah, had also run for Congress in California in a crowded field and as a Democrat in 2014, but had lost with only 14% of the vote in the open primary election.

Of those five, only Trump seems to stand a decent chance of surviving a rough primary season and earning a rematch with Biden in 2024.  Nikki Haley might possibly have almost a snowball's chance in hell of prevailing if an infinite number of stars aligned  perfectly and  provided ideal circumstances - which would probably have to include another pandemic or at least an alien invasion.  But for everyone else, a run for President just seems to be a way to achieve a bit of minor celebrity and leave their grandchildren with some interesting tidbits for show-an-tell.

But hey, this is America - and if you have the filing fees, why not go for it!