The neverending speculation that former first lady Michelle Obama will eventually replace President Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee just received a substantial boost over the past week.
The latest grist for the rumor mill is that the Obamas have been quietly reaching out to Democratic donors and Wall Street CEOs to gauge the level of support she would receive if she entered herself into the presidential fray, according to New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams.
Adams' claims, absurd as they may sound, can't be easily dismissed, however, as other journalists and pundits have revealed that they have heard similar rumblings from sources they trust about the secretive outreach efforts of the former first lady and ex-president.
It was in a Jan. 17 column from Adams that she first advised her readers to not be "shocked if Michelle Obama sneaks her way into the 2024 race" given that President Biden has increasingly shown that he is incapable of effectively finishing out his current term in office, much less running for, winning, and leading the country for another four years.
The columnist noted that the Obamas, who are not known for making "casual" statements and generally have some overarching purpose behind their public commentary, have been increasingly verbose about how "terrified" they were at the prospect of another term in the White House for former President Donald Trump.
Adams further pointed out the bereft bench for Democrats of plausible alternatives to Biden and claimed that, per her sources, both Barack and Michelle Obama, perhaps as far back as mid-2022, have been surreptitiously surveying business leaders and Democratic bigwigs for their thoughts on a possible presidential run by the former first lady.
The Post's Adams returned to that same topic in her Jan. 22 column and strongly implied that her initial report about the Obamas testing the waters for a possible presidential run had been confirmed by even more unnamed "credible sources."
Based on what she'd learned, an apparent tentative plan has come into focus that involves President Biden, at some point between May and the Democratic nominating convention in August, announcing publicly for some yet-to-be-determined reason that he was dropping out of the 2024 race and ending his candidacy for another term in office.
Then, during the convention, Michelle Obama will swoop in as some sort of beloved savior for the Democratic Party and accept its nomination to fill in for Biden in what would otherwise be a rematch of the 2020 election against former President Trump.
Conservative-leaning podcast host Megyn Kelly, who has previously been rather dismissive of the Michelle-will-replace-Joe rumors, recently appeared to back up the seemingly absurd claims of the Post columnist by revealing that she has been independently hearing the same things from her own sources.
When asked about the persistent rumors by Australian Sky News host Paul Murray, Kelly said, "I don’t know, I’ve been all along saying I don’t think it will be Michelle Obama because she doesn’t want to be back in Washington, in the White House or politics," but observed, "However, I’m hearing more about this alleged reach out to top Democratic donors by the Obamas to see if they would support it."
"There have been two reports now in the New York Post from -- yes, the gossip columnist -- Cindy Adams," she continued, "so maybe it's true the donors are going to talk about it if they get a reach out from Michelle and Barack Obama whether there’s an appetite for her."
The apparent impetus behind this speculation is the overt concern many Democrats have about President Biden's advanced age and declining physical and mental health and capabilities, in conjunction with his perpetually dismal job approval numbers and public polling that now consistently shows him losing to his rival Trump in the general election.
How or why Biden would step aside from his re-election bid has yet to be made clear, and Michelle Obama has often and repeatedly expressed her intense loathing for Washington D.C. politics and lack of desire to run for office or return to the White House, so there remains plenty of reasons to continue to doubt the rumored replacement unless and until concrete evidence of such is revealed.
