MSNBC
Despite the fact that we’re just a year into Joe Biden’s presidency, Democratic donors, strategists and pundits are already eyeing his potential 2024 successors if he declines to run for re-election. And already there’s a new conventional wisdom emerging: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s star is rising while Vice President Kamala Harris’ star appears to be crashing.
The invisible primary — the process by which party elites try to pick a candidate well before any votes are cast or voters even form opinions on candidates — is often ugly business, and it’s already underway.
Buttigieg has got a simpler gig that provides a smoother runway for a presidential run.
It’s far too early to know if current trends will hold over time, and some of the reasons some bundlers are gravitating toward Buttigieg and nervous about Harris are tied to shallow and often indefensible hunches about so-called electability. But it’s worth pointing out that there is one good reason Buttigieg is more well positioned than Harris to take the reins from the man who appointed him: He’s got a simpler gig that provides a smoother runway for a presidential run.
Transportation secretary is generally one of the less glamorous positions in the president’s Cabinet. But in the Biden administration, there’s real opportunity for star power.
That’s because it’s at the heart of Biden’s legislative agenda: Buttigieg is in charge of implementing and championing many of the projects to be enacted under the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed in November, a huge piece of legislation that has given him unprecedented authority as head of the Department of Transportation. The job is a serious and complex one: It involves overseeing an agency with over 50,000 employees, working with $100 billion in spending and bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders who often have conflicting interests on projects like highways and rail lines and the rebuilding of cityscapes to make them greener and safer.
It’s a job that isn’t particularly…
