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It's Either Hillary or Biden

Hillary will survive her email woes, but scandals serve as tests that show the strengths and weaknesses of politicians. What the email scandal showed is that Hillary lacks her husband’s breezy ability to weather political outrage. Instead her paranoia and resentment combine to make her scandals worse.

Democrats are looking for inspiration, but Hillary couldn’t whip up inspiration on a very special episode of Oprah. The petty resentment that Obama camouflages under a likeable exterior is out in the open.

That’s why the media doesn’t like her. Hillary doesn’t pretend to inspire. She’s running to win.

Obama could have been using a private email server out of Tehran and the media would have dismissed it as a non-issue. Hillary Clinton however is in the middle of a slap fight with the media. The email scandal is a warning that she won’t have a free ride to the nomination. If she wins it, the press corps will protect and serve her. But not until then. And if she falls, the Democratic Party is in big trouble.

Democrats don’t have a lot of non-Hillary options. While the left is pining for Elizabeth Warren to run, and the media’s sudden enthusiasm for Hillary’s emails was prompted by Warren’s hesitancy in even expressing any real interest in running as long as Hillary is inevitable, Warren 2016 remains a fantasy.

Outside the left’s fever swamps, Elizabeth Warren has low name recognition. Name recognition is the only way that Hillary Clinton got this far and Warren has even less charisma than Hillary Clinton. A speech by Warren feels like a lecture. Her public persona careens from outraged to befuddled. Her only advantage is that most people don’t think that she looks like the rich lawyer that she actually is, but that’s because she reminds them of a sour librarian scolding those darn kids making noise in the stacks.

Warren’s routine, fake outrage at the banks that fund her political movement, got old a while back. And she’ll have to tone even the fake outrage down if she wants cash from Warren Buffett. Her only possible reason to run is that if turnout for her next election follows the usual pattern, especially if a Democrat squats in the White House, she may not even be able to keep her seat in the Senate.

While the left’s skill at building a cult of personality around someone you wouldn’t trust to wash your car shouldn’t be underestimated, getting Elizabeth Warren elected tested their limits in Massachusetts. If the Democratic Party gets tied to Warren, it will be betting that it can sell four more years of Obama with Jimmy Carter in a skirt. It would have a better shot at bringing back Dukakis riding in a tank. And nominating yet another Massachusetts Democrat whose last name isn’t Kennedy is a suicide mission for a party that already crashed and burned with Dukakis and Kerry.

But without Warren or Clinton, the slate looks even worse.

For those on the hard left, there’s always Bernie Sanders’ quixotic campaign to lose to anybody and everybody. Sanders recently said that Obama’s mistake was sitting down and talking to Republicans. That’s like running against Stalin on a platform of more Gulags.

Martin O’Malley, a Maryland governor best known for his rain tax, is still waiting in the wings, either to run for president or to get his ObamaCare site working. If Hillary has to back out, he’s the most likely to emerge as a consensus candidate, not because he’s done anything to deserve it, but because he’s the only Democrat below retirement age who wants the job and doesn’t rant aimlessly at the camera.

Under Obama, Maryland’s bedroom communities became a hive of fabulously wealthy government contractors and employees who want to keep on robbing Americans blind. If Hillary stumbles, he won’t lack for donors. He will however lack for less crucial items such as a personality and accomplishments.

O’Malley jumped on the ObamaCare bandwagon early and often. He came away with a trainwreck, having to entirely scrap his exchange site. Tax increases, including the rain tax, didn’t do much to endear him to anyone in Maryland.

6 out of 10 Maryland Democrats say that O’Malley would not make a good president. If he doesn’t have their support, whose support does he have?

That leaves Jim Webb, a man of unpredictable politics who is loathed by much of the left and ignored by nearly everyone else. Webb might be able to win over some of the working class whites that the party has lost, but the same left that thinks Hillary is practically a Republican and that Obama panders too much to the GOP, would do everything possible to stop him if he ever became a real threat.

Webb could go left. He’s already pushing the left’s income inequality meme in his campaign, but he’s stiff and awkward on that… and on everything else. Barring a major national security crisis in which the Democrats suddenly need someone with credibility who can do the tough talk without a teleprompter, he isn’t likely to rise to the top or even get noticed. Think of Wesley Clark and then forget about him. Discounting wild cards, like ex-losers Al Gore and John Kerry trying to mount a comeback, or Vermin Supreme’s candidacy suddenly catching fire (he’s running on a platform of fully funding time travel) that just leaves the Democratic Party with Joe Biden.

Yes, Joe Biden.

Biden is good on the campaign trail (and nowhere else) as long as you ignore his inappropriate outbursts and strange behavior. He is also the only non-Clinton candidate in the race with name recognition. Considering that less than half of Democrats know that the earth revolves around the sun, assuming that they can recognize a candidate based on his or her body of work is excessively optimistic.

Biden is nothing if not memorable. And he’s been chomping at the bit. He didn’t take the second banana gig to wander aimlessly around the White House. If Hillary stays in, the real fight will be between these two miserable remnants of a failed administration squabbling over the nomination like two mangy dogs fighting over a lost hot dog. If Hillary drops out, Joe Biden immediately becomes the pack leader. That’s when the left will pull out all the stops to get Elizabeth Warren into the race, which she’ll lose.

The Democratic Party’s non-Hillary option is Joe Biden. If the Republican Party fails to get its act together, Biden is also America’s non-Hillary option.

Biden has too many obvious and glaring flaws for the Democrats to let him beat Hillary, but without Hillary, it’s going to have a hard time keeping him from dominating a list of obscure candidates. Write off Hillary and the left unites behind Elizabeth Warren, the rest jump behind Martin O’Malley and the media has to go into overdrive to try and destroy Biden before he becomes their party’s nominee.

Either that or they embrace him.

Joe Biden may be a joke, but so is every candidate running. Hillary Clinton is Evita without the sense of style. Elizabeth Warren is a rich lawyer and academic inveighing against the 1 percent. Martin O’Malley had a rain tax. Bernie Sanders is the left-wing alternative that not even the left wants. Al Gore appears to be flirting with yet another presidential run. Biden may be a joke, but at least he knows it.

Biden thinks that he can get the minority vote by riding in on Obama’s coattails and polls suggest that  he may be right. On a campaign trail against Bill Clinton, he would lose, but he’ll be campaigning against the same Hillary who was responsible for that awkward and uncomfortable UN email press conference.

And the media likes Biden. It hasn’t fallen in love with him as their new messiah, but it will accept him a lot faster than it will accept Hillary Clinton.

Biden’s loose lips are a liability, but they have yet to cost him anything. His embarrassing debate behavior and any ridiculous thing he says have become part of his brand. By linking his fortune to Obama, Biden became bulletproof. As a running joke, he’s immune from any standards of behavior.

And the real joke is that Biden may end up having the last laugh from the Oval Office.

Comments

  1. He's 72 today. If he wins that will make him 4 OLDER than Ronald Reagan was when HE was inaugurated (and 10 months younger than Reagan the second time). Running as America's befuddled Constantin Chernenko isn't going to work.

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  2. Anonymous13/3/15

    The other possibility is that Obama starts a military coup and becomes the dictator he was destined to be.

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  3. Elizabeth Faux-cahontas Warren is another one who could take the crown, in which case Mrs. Clinton becomes actually preferable.

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  4. Anonymous13/3/15

    Here's the campaign slogan that we're all forgetting, "How now brown cow." Forget Biden, forget Warren, from California comes a man for the task at hand. He's a man who never met a public union contribution he didn't like, a man who is an ace at backroom backroom deals the public never finds out about, a man who undoubtedly was the inspiration for the Mr. Krupp character in the Captain Underpants series of books, he's the one, the only, the consummate angry finger wagger, the chief engineer on the high speed Boondoggle Express, Jerry Brown! He's out there (sometimes really out there), he's rested (but tired), and he's ready (to go out to pasture). And remember, California is always 8 years ahead of the nation on everything. Or was it eight years behind?

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  5. My daughter and I have often wondered if Joe Biden is doing the 'Claudius' routine ... surviving in a dynasty of brutal authoritarians by pretending to be a loose-lipped, eccentric numbskull.

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  6. "That’s like running against Stalin on a platform of more Gulags."

    Great line.

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  7. The democrat party needs to choose between a perverted clown and nurse Ratched.
    Or go out on a very thin limb with Fauxcohontas or Raintaxman O'Malley.
    This will be entertaining, LOL.
    Excellent post, Daniel!

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  8. J. Biden vs. J. Bush or C. Christie (who I read are the Republican front runners) ?! I weep for my country.

    Seriously, the Democrats can only win because of the absolutely pathetic lack of opposition, intellectual and moral, on the part of the Republicans.

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    Replies
    1. I absolutely agree with you. Republicans cannot win because they stubbornly recycle the same old. They are an embarrassment. Not necessarily worse than current Democratic leaders, but certainly no better.

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  9. What about Jerry Brown???

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  10. Anonymous14/3/15

    I think Obama will enforce martial law to battle the civil disobedience that will be caused when the people figure out that the upcoming Article V Constitutional convention throws out everything about good government that America used to be.
    Whirlwinder

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  11. Reading my comment correctly, as I was saying it while typing it -- we have to put emphasis on the word 'is'.

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  12. Michael15/3/15

    Remember De Blasio ...no one paid him any attnetion, while Weiner kept media distracted by shenanigans until time for election; basically openly communist won by default because of minor name recognition. I think lie-a-watha warren could do the same thing.

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  13. Charming Richard15/3/15

    Every time I mention Biden's chances people laugh. Looking at Obama's staff choices you have to ask: Where does Biden fit it with that gang?

    Of course, he doesn't. He was forced on Obama by the big money old time machine political bosses as a relief valve in case something went wrong. As Obama stumbles and bumbles Old Joe is the one laughing because he has mastered politics like no other democrat now in power.

    Don't be too shocked if Joe gets to run as a sitting president. The nation is suffering from Obama/Negro/Clinton fatigue and the ever widening scandals could produce a resignation in the next 12 to 16 months.

    If this plays out, Crazy Old Joe will coast into the top spot. He has the real power securely in his pocket.

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  14. Y. Ben-David15/3/15

    To this day, I can't figure out how Hillary blew it in 2008. Actually, after she pointed out during the primary campaigns that Obama wasn't really an American, she started winning all the primaries, but it was too late. The conclusion that I came to is that people really don't like the Clintons, they are simply too sleazy. After all, Al Gore couldn't win in 2000 riding on Slick Willie's coattails even thought people perceived the economy was good and there was peace. Had Gore carried his own home state of Tennessee he would have won, but he couldn't.
    As I said in a comment on a previous thread, the simple fact is that decent, intelligent people don't want to be President anymore, leaving Americans with the political riff-raff to rule them. Very, very sad.

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  15. Anonymous15/3/15

    Great analysis but I wish you would have explained why Obama put the shiv in the Hildabeast's back, if he hadn't a candidate in the wings. My bet is an relative unknown, possibly the former gov. of Massachusetts, Duval? Or even Michelle, a far shot I admit, but bot beyond the imagination of these sociopaths.

    The email leaks came from the White House, beyond doubt. But the question remains if it was to destroy the Hildabeast, who does Obama wish to insert in her place?

    I doubt it is Biden or Warren.

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  16. All of which makes the voter fraud machinery becomes all the more critical. It will come out of the woodwork in every state, having been fully overhauled by Stimulus monies. We'd better have a helluva defense limbered up.

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  17. Anonymous16/3/15

    That Biden/PoPo picture is hilarious. Every time I look at it I laugh harder. If nothing else, a Biden Presidency would be entertaining.

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  18. Anonymous16/3/15

    Obama beat Hillary on better planning and execution. She had more actual primary delegates, but Obama out maneuvered her by crowding out Hillary supporters in states with caucuses. Hillary supporters couldn't even get in the doors.

    That gave him an edge in states without a real primary, and kept the losses close in states that both voted and had a caucus. The intensity of that support gave him the appearance of momentum, which was leveraged into peeling away the super delegates from their presumed Clinton support. Prying the super delegates away from Hillary was the real margin of victory.

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