The general consensus is that last night’s debate didn’t go very well for President Joe Biden.
My colleague James Pindell gave Biden an “F” for his performance against former president Donald Trump (he gave Trump a “B”). Globe columnist Renée Graham wrote that Biden “inexplicably did not meet the moment.” And Joan Vennochi wrote that “Biden looked and sounded old, tired, and confused — exactly the opposite of what he needed to do to shore up confidence about his age and mental abilities.
It didn’t take long for Democrats and liberal journalists across the country to launch another round of speculation that the party might need to replace Biden atop the ticket at the convention in Chicago later this summer.
And New York Times columnists Nicholas Kristof and Ezra Klein floated a familiar name last night: Gina Raimondo.
”The Democratic Party has some prominent figures who I think would be in a good position to defeat Trump in November, among them Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce,” Kristof wrote in his debate analysis. “And there are many others.”
Klein suggested several names in the Matter of Opinion podcast that was recorded following the debate, including Raimondo’s.
It’s worth noting that Vice President Kamala Harris is generally considered the most obvious choice if Biden decided to call it quits. California Governor Gavin Newsom is also among the many Democrats who appear to be lining up to make a run for the White House some day.
The case for Raimondo: To be clear, the commerce secretary from Rhode Island is highly unlikely to replace Biden this year, but she does have a compelling argument that she has played a key role on two of his most significant accomplishments over the last four years: The CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The “60 Minutes” profile on Raimondo in April accurately noted that between microchips and broadband expansion, she can, with a straight face, make the claim that she’s touching the lives of every American.
Cold water: Raimondo is beloved in the business community, but she’s totally unknown by the vast majority of Americans. Journalist Matthew Yglesias pointed out on Twitter this week that a recent poll showed that 85 percent of voters had no opinion or had never heard of Raimondo (that’s true of the majority of any president’s cabinet).
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via e-mail Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.