With Biden out of the 2024 race, Michelle Obama should run. She would win

Barack Obama for first lady!

That has a nice ring to it. He’s ready. He knows where the trash goes, where the bowling alley is in the basement, where his office is. Here’s why that is important and the only way to go.

A Reuters poll shows Michelle Obama leading Donald Trump by 10 points if they become the competing nominees for the presidency. That’s close to a landslide, a rout — a Democratic House and Senate, maybe a governor or two more than today. Other polls are closer, but she wins. In any poll I’ve seen, she alone has that lead! She has said she is not a candidate and will not be one, but she needs to be drafted.

Now that Joe Biden has stepped aside, I’ve lost bragging rights that he had once met me. Long ago I spent an hour interviewing him for a Minnesota Historical Society project and much later had dinner with him at the vice president’s mansion. It wasn’t exactly tête-à-tête, but there were only a couple dozen of us. Our photo together will lose some of its charm, but I’m prepared, in the national interest, to put it in a drawer face down.

Shunning Biden is not easy. He has done well as senator, vice president and president. I would have voted for him again if he was the Democratic nominee and comatose. But if a Republican had performed as he did in the debate, I would have called loudly for him to step aside. If Joe Biden were leading Trump, I would have remained silent, while still hoping he would step aside. But the possibility of his losing to Trump should have been enough for him to seek a graceful way out. The likelihood didn’t leave room for grace. It said “You must go.”

The word from White House aides was a whisper: He is generally “sharp and focused but sometimes confused and forgetful.’’ When a similar description of Ronald Reagan was made, Democrats urged his defeat not simply on conservative ideology, but also because of moments of aging like President Biden also now clearly shows.

What would have happened if President Biden stumbled just a bit in his acceptance speech or lost his place or garbled a sentence or just hesitated too long between thoughts? Doomsday for Democrats, delight from Republicans panting in heat for a silent 2025 revolution.

Biden had gathered governors in the White House recently so they could exit saluting. But a governor invited to the White House doesn’t accept the invitation with any intent to say, “Please drop out.”

So what or who could have persuaded the President to see things differently? While still adamant on running, Biden had an answer for that in his ABC interview: “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race.” But then he added, “The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”

That’s because God knows his place. He is not a registered voter and has not been visible at any Democratic National Convention I have watched. He will decide if Joe Biden gets into heaven, which I’m sure he will.

Without divine guidance, Joe Biden should have stepped down, leaving Kamala Harris to run as the incumbent president, or hopefully clear the way for Michelle Obama.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.