A New York Times columnist this week suggested that President Joe Biden and U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney team up for a bipartisan presidential ticket in 2024.
Columnist Thomas Friedman, who has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, theorized that the United States possibly needed to “mute” the hyperpolarization in politics by having the two main political parties team up for the next presidential election.
“This is the democratic way of defeating a threat to democracy. Not doing it is how democracies die. I am quite aware that it is highly unlikely; America does not have the flexibility of a parliamentary, proportional-representation system,” Friedman wrote Tuesday. “And yet, I still think it is worth raising. There is no precedent for how close we’re coming to an unraveling of our democracy, either.”
Friedman compared the United States’ issues with political polarization to conflicts in Israel and Palestine and questioned whether the U.S. should follow their lead, since the countries have formed a diverse national unity government.
“We should be ready to talk about Liz Cheney as part of a blow-your-mind Israeli-style fusion coalition with Democrats. It is a coalition that says: ‘There is only one overriding goal right now — that is saving our democratic system,'” political scientist Steven Levitsky told Friedman in the column.
Cheney has become an unpopular figure among some Republicans over the last year due to her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for his actions in allegedly incite the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Cheney was ultimately removed from her position as House Conference chair due to her differences with her Republican colleagues. She is also serving on the Jan. 6 committee investigating the events of the day.
However, this does not mean she will be running with Biden as vice president, Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
“This is such a bogus and absurd proposition from one individual NYT columnist,” Adler said. ” To be clear, Liz is a conservative Republican. She has voted against Joe Biden’s agenda nearly 90% of the time, which is more than most House Republicans. Liz is focused completely on fighting for the people of Wyoming, the work of the select committee, and winning reelection.”
