Mirsky: Strongest Candidates-President 2020: Bill Weld Edition

Exeter, New Hampshire – This is Attorney David Mirsky reporting from the frontlines of the 2020 Presidential election with my latest report.

REPUBLICANS

Former U.S. Attorney William Weld, who is also a former Governor of Massachusetts, appears to be actually running for President, for the Republican Party’s Nomination for President, in 2020. This means that Weld has the opportunity to become the Senator Eugene McCarthy of 2020. If you will recall, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota upended the 1968 Presidential race simply by attracting a large number of votes in the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Primary of 1968. Although Eugene McCarthy did not win in New Hampshire, he received enough votes to force President Lyndon Baines Johnson to realize that opposition to the Vietnam War was so intense that he could not be re-elected. Senator Eugene McCarthy's success in New Hampshire demonstrated that LBJ, though he was the President, was not even a clear favorite to win the Democratic Nomination for President in 1968.

Governor William Weld is actually a much stronger candidate for President than was Eugene McCarthy, as Weld has experience as a U.S. Attorney in the field of combatting organized crime. Weld is a very serious individual: much more serious than the usual types of people who get involved in Presidential Politics. You have to remember, in Presidential Politics, the vast majority of the candidates are going to lose, so people often wonder why they did it in the first place.

But William Weld, like Senator Eugene McCarthy before him, stands to achieve much more than most Presidential candidates, even if he does not win, because there are many who believe the very survival of our Democracy in the United States depends on the defeat of our current president. There are those who believe that our current President does not respect either Democracy or the Rule of Law.

A defeat in New Hampshire, in his own party's Presidential Primary, would seriously limit our current president's chances of being re-elected.

William Weld has, in effect, stated that his reason for running in 2020 would be to preserve, protect and defend the Rule of Law in the United States. That’s a pretty good reason.

Now the current president of the United States is no Lyndon Baines Johnson. He lacks many of LBJ’s more impressive qualities, most particularly in that LBJ was strong enough, and noble enough, to carry this country on his back following the assassination of our beloved U.S. President John F. Kennedy. But, as indicated above, Vietnam was LBJ’s Waterloo.

I would not expect our current president to react with the same foresight or acumen if he should face a symbolic defeat in New Hampshire to William Weld next year. The most effective way to defeat him would be a true numerical defeat at the ballot box in every state.

DEMOCRATS

I usually discuss the candidates from both parties, but I am waiting to do that until after former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden makes his 2020 announcement.

Until then, happy campaigning, and try to avoid the foreign agents. . . .