One of the Top Candidates to Replace Biden Is a Former NASA Astronaut

If President Joe Biden decides to bow out of the presidential race, which now seems like a growing possibility, there will need to be a new candidate — and one of the top non-Kamala Harris choices for the job just happens to have been a prominent NASA astronaut.

As Politico reports, ex-astronaut and current Senator Mark Kelly is being considered as one of the top contenders for the role should Harris not helm the ticket.

Kelly was highlighted in a widely-circulated polling memo by an outfit called BlueLabs Analytics, Politico reports, outperforming Biden in a range of swing states. And his story is about as American as apple pie, which as The Daily Beast notes makes him a particularly compelling pick for a Democratic party in crisis.

Raised by ex-cops in New Jersey with his twin, Scott Kelly, the junior senator from Arizona ended up as a NASA astronaut by first enlisting in the Navy and working his way up through the ranks. He and his twin were both selected as Space Shuttle pilots in 1996, and later enrolled in a NASA study with his brother to see how space radiation affects genes.

Kelly ended up retiring in 2011 when his wife, then-congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and nearly killed at a rally in Arizona. Over the ensuing decade, Kelly co-founded a now-infamous Tuscon company that makes the kind of high-altitude balloons that freaked everyone out last year, began campaigning for gun control alongside his wife, and eventually won a seat in the Senate in 2020.

He's also become something of a character in the spaceflight community for outspoken remarks and bombastic stunts — like the time he admitted to trying to smuggle a gorilla suit onto the ISS to prank his twin, except that the SpaceX shuttle it was on blew up — as well as emerging as a fierce advocate for science.

While Scott is the far more outspoken of the Kellys, Mark has always seemed to be the more studious of the two.

As such — and because he's, you know, a straight white man from a swing state — the Arizona senator seems like as good a candidate pick as one can find in this race.

Plus, it would admittedly be hilarious to watch an ex-astronaut debate Donald Trump.

More on politics: Former Congressman Says the RNC Is the "Grindr Super Bowl"