The Ten Humans Most Likely to Be President in February 2025 (March 2023 Edition)
The second in an ongoing series.
The first votes for President of the United States will take place 10 months from now, in Iowa, where Republican voters (but not Democratic voters) will let their voices be heard. Ten months ago is a very short amount of time. Ten months ago was the Uvalde shooting. Does that seem like 10 months ago? It will be here before you realize it.
This is to say: The 2024 Presidential campaign, like it or not, is well underway. So one must start paying attention. Thus, we continue our feature: Presidential Power Rankings. These will run monthly. A lot can happen in a month.
This is not a ranking of my favorite candidates, or the ones who have the most current momentum. It is simply a ranking of the 10 people most likely to be the President in February 2025 — after the next election.
Here’s the inaugural top 10. We’ll see you again on these in a month.
10. Marianne Williamson (last month: Unranked). There are only four announced candidates for President, and Williamson is one of them, so, for surely only this one month, she gets to make the list. (The other candidate to announce this month gets a nod next on this list as well.) You may remember Williamson running in 2020, though she didn’t even make it to Iowa. That is not a good sign: If you can’t even make it to Iowa when there’s an open field, I don’t like your odds challenging the current President of the United States. Good luck with your book sales, though.
9. Vivek Ramaswamy (last month: Unranked). Ramaswamy, independently wealthy because of a biotech startup (and there’s nothing voters love more than executives at biotech companies), has made a name for himself for hating “woke” things. He hates Woke stuff! He wrote a whole book called Woke, Inc., and he’s always going on television hollering about it. Whether or not you think he’s right that “wokeness” is ruining America — and I’ll confess I’ve reached the point that simply hearing the word “woke” makes my eyelids heavy — it’s tough to see a situation where Ramaswamy gets much traction in a lane that the two heavyweights (literally!) in the Republican party are purposefully clogging in every way that they can. Again, though: Good luck with your book sales, though.
8. Mike Pence (last month: 7). Mike Pence made headlines this week when, at the Press Gridiron dinner, he said “history will hold Trump accountable for January 6.” Impressive, right? Well, it’s telling that Pence made this at a closed press event that was essentially off the record, which means no one recorded it or took photos. Which means the only people who could document are the very people least trusted by the voters Pence is going for. The speech will surely give Pence better coverage by journalist. I have no idea how he thinks that’s going to help him.
7. Nikki Haley (last month: 5). So, how’s the campaign going so far? Well, Haley has mostly been ignored by the national press since her announcement — Ron DeSantis, who isn’t running yet, is getting roughly 100 times as much coverage, on Fox News and otherwise, than she is — and the one real public appearance she made, at CPAC, got her booed like crazy for “betraying” Donald Trump. Remember when she was a rising star? Haley seems like a smart, savvy person, but being smart and savvy are 2012 Republican candidate traits, not 2024 ones. This isn’t her party anymore. Deep down, she has to know that.
6. Pete Buttigieg (last month: 8). Buttigieg still has to wait for the current President to get out of his way, and it will (probably!) be four years until that happens. But he’s staying active, not only getting in a quiet (but fascinating) feud with Mike Pence that will only earn him credits with the left wing of his party (which is often suspicious of him) but generally navigating the train disaster in Ohio (which no reasonable person considers his fault) without any lasting damage. The guy is good. If Biden were to drop out, Kamala Harris has a fight on her hands.
5. Kamala Harris (last month: 6). She’d still be the favorite, though. But the closer we get to Biden announcing his candidacy, which he is widely assumed to be set on doing, the closer Harris (and Buttigieg) get to dropping off this list entirely.
4. Tim Scott (last month: 4). Scott hasn’t done much to help his case in the last month — and he has been difficult to find on camera — but I will say again what I said last month: He is most poised to benefit if something dramatic happens with the top two candidates in his party. A lot has to happen for that to go down. But this is a better candidate than you think.
3. Ron DeSantis (last month: 3). DeSantis continues to have his entire party apparatus behind him … which may or may not be a good thing. There are reasons to think that, on a national stage, he may not quite be ready for primetime; can he appeal to people outside Fox News? But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. He has to win his party’s nomination before he can even start thinking about that, and here is your regular remind that he is still behind the previous guy.
2. Donald Trump (last month: 2). If formeting an insurrection wasn’t enough to make you want to vote for this guy, maybe this will do it:
I call that move “flossing the elephants.” Anyway, this guy is still the favorite to win his party’s nomination, which, it should be forever screamed from the mountaintops, is completely insane.
- Joe Biden (previously: 1). The wider the gap between №3 and №2 on this list … the wider the gap between №2 and №1 is.
See you next month. If we survive until then.
Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.