Conservative commentator Margaret Hoover says she will ‘quite likely’ vote for Biden

Margaret Hoover, the conservative political commentator and great-granddaughter of former Republican President Herbert Hoover, said she will not vote for President Trump in November and will “quite likely” cast her ballot for Joe Biden instead. 

In an interview with progressive strategist Jonathan Tasini on his podcast “The Working Life,” shared first with The Hill, Hoover called the 2020 presidential election a “binary choice” between Trump and Biden. 

She noted that she is “concerned” about the direction of the Democratic Party and progressives’ efforts to exert more influence within its ranks. But ultimately, she said, “I can’t bring myself to vote for Donald Trump.”

“Look, here’s what I’ll say: I do think it’s a binary choice,” Hoover, who hosts the PBS public affairs show “Firing Line,” said. “Perfect is not on the menu. Nobody is going to be your ideal candidate. You can’t dream somebody up out of nothing that’s going to be the perfect candidate, so you do have to pick between a series of bad choices.”

“I can’t bring myself to vote for Donald Trump,” she added. “And while I disagree and am quite concerned frankly about the battles that will ensue between your wing of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden and the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party, I am very interested in those battles and hoping that I can contribute somehow to them coming out right and to really engaging in the debates that we will have if Joe Biden wins.”

Pressed by Tasini on whether she will vote for the Democratic presidential nominee in November, Hoover, who has long spoken critically of the president and has openly lamented his hold on the GOP, acknowledged that she “will quite likely be casting my vote for Joe Biden.”

Her comments come as a number of high-profile Republicans have publicly broken with their own party’s candidate in favor of Biden. 

At the Democratic National Convention last month, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a one-time GOP presidential candidate, threw his support behind Biden. And last week, the Biden campaign released a list of 27 former GOP members of Congress who had endorsed him over Trump.