Former California State Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown has declared, in the wake of the first Democratic Party presidential primary debate, that there is still no candidate who can beat President Donald Trump.
Brown made his observations in his most recent column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday, titled, “Bad news for Democrats — none of these candidates can beat Trump.”
Brown wrote:
The first Democratic debates proved one thing: We still don’t have a candidate who can beat Donald Trump.
California Sen. Kamala Harris got all the attention for playing prosecutor in chief, but her case against former Vice President Joe Biden boiled down in some ways to a ringing call for forced school busing. It won’t be too hard for Trump to knock that one out of the park in 2020.
…
Trump must have enjoyed every moment and every answer, because he now knows he’s looking at a bunch of potential rivals who are still not ready for prime time.
Read Brown’s full column here.
It was the second time Brown has panned the Democratic primary field. He wrote in February, after President Trump’s widely-praised State of the Union address: “Make no mistake, President Trump’s State of the Union address was the kickoff for his 2020 re-election campaign, and so far I’ve yet to see a Democrat who can beat him. … They all have impressive credentials, winning personalities and positive messages, but none displays the “people personality” that our media-savvy president has mastered.”
Brown’s criticism included Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), whom he infamously dated in the 1990s, appointing her to state jobs commanding significant salaries. He wrote in January:
Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago. Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker.
And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco. I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a host of other politicians.
The title of his column on that occasion: “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.