CLAY: I saw this story and I said “We should definitely mention this.” Kamala Harris. They are trying to raise money based on you get a photograph with Kamala Harris if you donate a certain amount of money. And Joe Biden’s vice president has become so unpopular that initially they were asking $15,000 per photograph. Now they have lowered their asking price all the way down to $5,000.

Now, many of you out there listening are saying to yourselves, “Wait a minute. Who in the world would even pay $5,000 for a Kamala Harris photo?” This is actually not that high when it comes to politicians that are much desired. People want that photo. They want to put it on their office wall if you’re a big Democrat supporter. The fact that they can’t even sell Kamala Harris meet-and-greet for 15K, and they’re now all the way down to 5K? I can’t help but laugh.

BUCK: That’s quite a sale, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I don’t know if anyone out there’s like a watch guy but if someone told you, “Hey, do you like my Rolex? It’s 15 grand,” and then a week later they’re like, “Actually it’s five grand,” you’d say, “That’s a fake Rolex,” right? That’s a big price reduction they’re doing in the Kamala Harris photo… But think, who really right now, who, that you can think of, meaning, you know, in very general terms, is gonna be to my knowledge excited about presenting it, to your point.

This is all about, “Oh, look at me. I’m connected in Democrat circles or Democrat donors.” Look, politicians on both sides do this. And I’m not… But the point is, who wants to associate their brand, their personal brand with Kamala Harris right now? And the answer is, even among Democrats, very few people.

CLAY: They don’t want the photo of Kamala on their wall. And we need to point out, Kamala dropped out of the Democrat primary before a vote was even taken. She was polling at 1%, no one liked her, the more times Democrats saw her speak, the less support they wanted to give her.

BUCK: Not before calling Joe Biden an old racist on stage in one of the Democrat debates, nor before her announcing, “I’m obviously a top-tier candidate.” Not so obvious, it turned out.

CLAY: This is part of the larger question that Democrats are going to have to answer, and this is why this discussion has begun more in earnest already. The Republican back bench — in other words, the contenders who could be president from the Republican Party — is way deeper than the list of Democrats. They have a huge generational divide, and then the people who are younger — the AOCs, the Mayor Petes of the world — no one actually likes them in terms of the larger base because of how left-wing they are.

Biden is helping to cover up the fact that there is no back bench in the Democrat Party. I mean, they’re trying to draft Beto. They’re gonna talk about bringing back Bernie and Elizabeth Warren — who, by the way, Rush coined the phrase Fauxcahontas, which obviously is a little bit different than Pocahontas, even wittier.

But that is where that started to take off in earnest and then Trump just came in and went straight Pocahontas. But I don’t see anybody in the Democrat Party that I would say, “Oh, this is the candidate that everybody is going to end lining up behind.” I don’t see any great back-benchers waiting to be president in their party right now.

BUCK: They’re gonna run AOC at some point, but that’s years down the line. It’s not quite her time yet, I would think, but Democrats… When I say run, I’m not sure she’ll get their nomination even, but she’ll certainly be in the mix as a Democrat contender, just based on name recognition and personal brand alone. Our friend — who gave some very kind words earlier in the show about this show — Jesse Kelly, has an idea.

He thinks — I saw him put this out on Twitter — that Eric Adams, the narrow of New York City, could be a sort of surprise contender for the Democrats in 2024. This is in a “Biden’s not running, let’s let the Democrats have an open primary world,” which I’ll be honest with you, someone put the odds up to me or someone said, “You gotta have another bet,” I think Biden’s running again right now. I think he thinks he’s running again against Trump and therefore he’s going to run again. But put aside whether that’s true or not, Clay, do you think Eric Adams is somebody who just as the mayor of New York City? I think he’s already such a disaster to New Yorkers that I feel like his brand is questionable.

CLAY: Yeah. I don’t think he would play very well nationally ’cause I don’t think the story he has to tell for New York City is very good. I understand the argument of Democrats made such an awful choice in defunding that they need to swing totally in the opposite direction and put a former cop on the ticket to try to inoculate themselves from that criticism that is a hundred percent valid because crime has skyrocketed all over the country. But I don’t think Eric Adams is that person who can end that that criticism — and, frankly, he hasn’t seemed that adroit on the national stage, whenever he tries to step in and talk beyond New York.

BUCK: I feel like whenever we get an opening, though, you think Hillary…? You think she’s not done yet. You think Hillary is still waiting in the wings.

CLAY: I do. I think ultimately when you look at all of the available options out there, what Hillary wants to have happen is for everybody to come to her on bended knee and say, “You’re the only person out there who can bring the Democrat Party to the White House in 2024.”

BUCK: So but how, then…? Let’s look at that narrative for a second. You have Biden who — Democrat perspective here — Biden beats Trump; Hillary loses to Trump. So how can you…? The Democrat apparatus replaces the winner, in a sense, with the loser based on the fact that Hillary’s, what, six or seven years younger, something like that?

CLAY: I think also you have to consider that Trump may not be the nominee. There’s a big New Yorker piece out there about DeSantis.

BUCK: Well, that changes everything.

CLAY: Battle royale, and the only way I think Biden’s the nominee is if Trump is running because they think, “Oh, he can beat Trump again.” I don’t think he would. I think Trump would squash Biden without covid hanging out over everything and given how poorly Biden has done. He can’t sell the “I’ll make things normal” when he’s been the most abnormal president in generations in terms of his actual presidency.

BUCK: I appreciated that you sent me that New Yorker profile piece. Supposed to be a hit piece on DeSantis. It was great. You love reading a hit piece when it’s essentially making the argument that, “Yeah, Ron DeSantis, when other people were out partying and doing kegstants, he was like, ‘I’m gonna work two jobs to pay off my loans and go serve in the military after I graduate from Yale and then Harvard,’ like a loser!” It was really funny.

CLAY: There was a line in there from one of his teammates where he was like, “Oh, he was basically a jerk, and he was always working really hard all the time, and his papers were so good that other people couldn’t claim they were even his work because he came up with such original thoughts — and, oh, by the way, he said ‘no’ to the experts and opened up Florida,” and I was like, “Yeah, these are all things that are very positive!”

BUCK: Even the snide comments that they could get from people that allegedly knew him in his past were either dripping with jealousy and/or just made him sound even cooler(laughing) It was amazing.

CLAY: I think that battle is gonna happen, but I wonder if they’re gonna circle back to Hillary because I’m not sure that anybody else is able to get the nomination, and I think you can’t underrate: Kamala is black, and she is a woman. By the Democrats’ own standards, if Biden were not running, it will be racist and sexist for her not to be the nominee. So, I think that knocks out a lot of people. Hillary at least could end the sexist argument if they could find a consistently good… The Eric Adams argument, he’s a black guy so that would at least take the race out of equation. But I don’t know how you knock out both the woman and the minority without being racist and sexist.