I love a good conspiracy theory. Aliens, ancient builders, Bigfoot—I will absolutely click on that headline and read the latest conspiracy, no matter how fanciful or ludicrous. Everyone has a harmless personal foible, right? And in the times we live in now, shadowy government conspiracies and UFOs are no longer just for “The X Files.”
My favorite new conspiracy theory goes like this: the Democrats know they are in big trouble for 2024. They have this addled, dementia-riddled, diaper-wearing octogenarian and his dreadful wife occupying the White House, and he’s become an embarrassment. These days he makes three to four hair-curling, cringey gaffes per week, falls up the stairs to Air Force One every time he tries to trot up them to project American strength and vigor, and has been credibly accused of passing gas in front of the Queen Consort of England. But Democrats can’t abandon him before the primaries because, well, Kamala. So Biden will announce he is running again but will withdraw sometime around the Democratic National Convention so as to clear the presidential field for . . .
Michelle Obama.
The stench of desperation is hilarious, isn’t it? That’s how bad the field of Democratic presidential prospects is. Democrats must be pretty frantic for someone to have conjured up and floated this rumor. A recent poll indicated 72 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to run again in 2024. Biden will be 82 shortly after the 2024 election. Is this Michelle Obama rumor supposed to give Democrats hope? To keep them from abandoning Biden because just wait, Michelle is waiting in the wings to save their party from Bad Orange Man, or even worse, Ron DeSantis?
Please. I’ll believe aliens taught Bigfoot how to make crop circles in Peru before I buy this one. Michelle Obama hates politics, hates voters, and hates Washington D.C., and not necessarily in that order.
She emerged from her privileged Martha’s Vineyard cocoon recently to recount in a podcast (about herself, naturally) that she cried uncontrollably for a half an hour on Air Force One when she left Washington, D.C., after Donald Trump’s inauguration. “Just straight, uncontrollable sobbing” from “holding it together for eight years” under the enormous, horrible, crushing burden of being the First Lady of the United States. Her story was one of struggle where living in the White House with staff to cater to her every need, traveling on her own ginormous government airplane to Japan and South Africa with her mother and her entourage, and enjoying eight years of wildly obvious throne sniffing media flattery as the Most Stylish First Lady Ever was just too much to bear.
And about those vacations? According to Judicial Watch, which obtained U.S. Air Force and Secret Service records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Obama travel expenses for family vacations cost U.S. taxpayers $114,691,322.17. That’s the Michelle I remember, the one who lived on grievance politics, took away the snack machines at my sons’ high school, and told me almost every day I was racist because I didn’t agree with her husband’s policies.
Almost eight years have passed since Michelle was finally freed from the prison of the White House. She has been quiet lately, working on a podcast and another book about her favorite topic—herself. She has homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Chicago, and the oceanfront plot where her husband is building a Hawaiian retreat where Tom Selleck’s boss used to live in in “Magnum P.I.” until the Obamas leveled it.
She travels to New York City to see the U.S. Open from box seats wearing $600 designer jeans and is seen leaving the swanky Pierre Hotel on the Upper East Side, where the presidential suite goes for $30,000 per night. She vacations in France with Bono, kayaks in Hawaii during the winter holidays, and wears thigh-high glittery $3,900 Balenciaga boots on book tours where she speaks for money about her struggles. She even wears her hair (well, someone’s hair . . . we all know she wore wigs while First Lady) in long braids now, an ethnic hairstyle which we racist voters denied her while her husband served two terms as president. Americans “weren’t ready” for a black family and ethnic hair, so she chose instead to have “healthcare pass” and to wear her hair straight.
I don’t believe it for a millisecond. Michelle Obama is living her best life right now, the life she has always wanted and felt that she deserved (if her husband hadn’t been a community organizer obsessed with politics who didn’t make any money and forced her to support the family). She’s completely free of the restraint of politics. Now she can say whatever she wants about people she used to have to pretend to like. Polls name her consistently as the most admired woman in America. You think she’s giving any of that up to schmooze and take photos with donors, or hit the campaign trail in Iowa, or spend the night in one-star hotels in Pennsylvania? Not likely.
Michelle Obama still has the attention of an eager, supplicant media, the admiration of liberal women, and enough money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she obviously has become accustomed. She has even eased off the whole “Let’s Move” thing and references to her famous biceps. Now she discusses her menopausal weight gain in this “blessed” time of life. Her kids are grown, they are millionaires, and life is good. Face it: she does not look or sound like a woman who wants to be president.
And presidential politics ain’t beanbag. The kid glove treatment she received as the wife of the first black presidential candidate would evaporate if she were the candidate. We would hear all over again about the unintelligible college thesis, the no-show political spoils job, the surrendered law license, the curious absence of any photos of her pregnant with her children, the complete lack of any electoral office other than that of wife.
Haven’t we as a country already had enough of ambitious, unqualified wives trying to ride their former president husbands’ coattails into office? Don’t we prefer our presidents to have some experience and qualifications, and perhaps even to have held elected office? Would Americans reward her first foray into running for office with the presidency? I hope not, but in the era of Senator John Fetterman, it’s not impossible to limit what Democrats and a complicit media may endeavor to achieve.
Even so: does she, dare I say, have the balls to run?
This conspiracy is merely a good laugh full of schadenfreude at the horrible predicament in which the Democratic Party has placed itself. They have made their bed with Joe Biden and cackling Kamala and there’s no way out. And Michelle Obama is not coming to save them.