Mirsky's List-Strongest Prez Candidates 2024: Pre-Iowa Chaos Edition

This is your dutiful reporter, Attorney David Mirsky of Exeter, New Hampshire, reporting on my own personal view of the Strongest Candidates for President in 2024, from my especially privileged view as a resident of our beautiful New Hampshire town, Exeter.

New Hampshire will very soon become the focus of attention in the world politisphere, and the good people of New Hampshire can be trusted with faithfully executing the laws of American Democracy. However, just at this very moment, the morning of January 13, 2024, our electoral brethren in the Great State of Iowa have taken the stage, as the world famous Iowa Caucuses are about to be conducted on Monday, January 15, 2024, which also happens to be the important national holiday of Martin Luther King Day. Iowa is currently suffering from an intense record cold snap, leaving the political prognosticators totally perplexed as to which voters will actually vote in that important event. I hope everyone everywhere who can do so will vote this year, because, as usual, the elections are important to our future.

But perhaps I have digressed too much from my true purpose in writing this, so here is my current list:

1. Nikki Haley, former UN Ambassador and former Governor of that Civil-War-Starting-State, South Carolina. Nikki Haley appears to have the most money and the most political TV ads, in which she appears in the widest and glitziest array of Republican Soccer Mom Fashion. This is quite a new kind of candidate. A Republican Woman, highly experienced in politics, tough as nails, with dark penetrating eyes, wearing perfectly tailored wealthy woman's flaired blue jeans, claiming pain in her heart for the financially less-well-off among us, whilst excoriating Democratic US President for pursuing policies of true economic empathy and compassion, all while being furiously endorsed by the New Hampshire electorate's new-found friend, the impressively enthusiastic Governor Chris Sununu. But, yes, that must be a winning combination because Nikki Haley is definitely winning here in New Hampshire.

2. Joe Biden, current US President. You know him, I expect. Joe Biden has an intense write-in campaign going on here on the Democratic side, you'd best believe that. New Hampshire Democrats know this, and can read and write, so the peripheral hanging-on candidates like Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips had best get ready for a rough evening on January 23.

3. Donald Trump, former US President. In his latest televised appearance, at least the one I have seen, Mr. Trump is beginning to look scared, like he actually may headed for criminal conviction and imprisonment as a result of one of his many indictment problems. Don't let his perennial backers in the news media fool you: No matter how much tanning solution he may be wearing, the Orange Man may actually end up in prison.

4. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Though he has tried valiantly to emphasize the inherent lack of compassion lurking in his heart towards the utterly blameless (and some might say heroic) LGBTQ+ community of Florida, the Florida Governor appears to be a victim himself, of what political savantes here and across the US are coming to recognize is the intense unlikeability of this man. DeSantis is losing in New Hampshire because his personality is so dark and despairing that, by comparison, Donald Trump and his now-withdrawn-as-a-candidate former running mate and former US Vice President, Mike Pence, look like the old comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

5. Mike Pence, former US Vice President. Now there's a candidate that Republican voters in New Hampshire might like to write in themselves: Mike Pence. His name is easy to spell and it's virtually guaranteed that if elected he won't even try to overthrow our government.

So that's my list for now. Bundle up, Iowa. We are rooting for your continued relevance and success as a political hotspot in the American Midwest.