I’m not sure candidates pay much attention to that these days. Gore, G.W. Bush, Obama and McCain and seem to have ignored it entirely. I guess there’s an argument to be made that Schweitzer could help shore up recent Democratic gains in the West, but Montana only has three electoral votes and Obama wasn’t competitive there in 2012, so it can’t be that high a priority.
PUMA here, but she’s too old, too tired and too out of date. She’s also got some skeletons in the closet. I’m not sure how I’d vote.
Nah, too much trouble. And while occasionally one hears something to suggest that maybe Hillary won’t run (though that’s pretty much drowned out by the gears of her campaign machine being tested out), I’m curious as to why you think Biden won’t run if Hillary sits this one out. The guy’s clearly been chomping at the bit; right after the 2012 election, when someone asked him how he felt about his last campaign being over, he basically responded, ‘who sez it’s my last campaign?’
He might decide that discretion is the better part of valor once Hillary runs, and proves to be the bigfoot everyone’s expecting her to be in the run-up to primary season. But if she doesn’t, I think only a major health issue would keep Biden out. And he’s looking pretty healthy.
Only the too-tired part of that is relevant, and only she knows the answer, and maybe not yet at that. She’d still be younger than Reagan. Out of date? How?
Skeletons in the closet? What hasn’t been yanked out of them already? She’s the rare candidate who’s bulletproof - there’s nothing the oppositionist opposition can come up with that can change her fav/unfav anymore, and any attempt would only backfire on them. It’s hers to lose.
Biden has to overcome his image, unfair or not, as a joke-cracking lightweight with no real accomplishments to point to. He may run, but he’s not going to build a truly dedicated voter base.
Any closet involving Bill and/or Hillary Clinton has long since been opened up and its secrets exposed. Including a bunch of closets whose secrets turned out to be pretty much bullshit, and some totally imaginary closets as well.
They will surely try to recycle some of the old scandals, but they won’t come up with anything new, unless you count Benghazi!, and that’s long since past its sell-by date unless you’re part of the 27%.
ETA: Ninja’d by Elvis, who said it better.
Tru dat, but I was responding to Chronos who believes that neither Hillary nor Biden will run. Even though I think Biden will go basically nowhere if he runs, I think he’s absolutely running if Hillary doesn’t, and will probably at least test the waters even if she does.
Cite? Not for him being an excellent governor; I agree on that (and it’s subjective anyway). But everything I’ve heard from him has been contrary to him running.
And I think that both Clinton and Biden are old enough that they’d both rather just retire. If they want to keep in the game, they’ll do it in the informal way, by giving speeches and managing foundations and so forth.
So just your gut feeling, based on their ages?
It’s certainly possible for either one to decide they just don’t have the energy anymore. But they both got where they are through intense ambition, and it would be very hard for either to let go after coming so close.
I’ll say it’s Hillary’s choice - if she runs, Biden may be readily convinced he can’t beat her, and would only damage his party’s chances if he opposed her. I’ll say Biden runs if and only if she doesn’t.
Basically, yeah, coupled with the fact that they’ve both now held extremely high positions which are either one a worthy capstone to a career.
It’s rare, though, that a Veep thinks of that position as the capstone of a career.
There have been eleven Vice-Presidents in my lifetime other than Biden. Two of them (LBJ, Ford) ascended to the Presidency after the death or resignation of their predecessor. A third, Spiro Agnew, was essentially disqualified by his felony conviction. That leaves eight cases to consider.
Six of those eight - Nixon, Humphrey, Mondale, GHW Bush, Quayle, and Gore - sought their party’s Presidential nominations, five successfully. The only two that didn’t were Dick Cheney and Nelson Rockefeller, and I’d have to regard them as the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule.
Secretary of State is a whole 'nother thing, of course. You rarely get U.S. Secretaries of State who’ve ever won an election at the state level, and of the few in recent decades who have, it’s usually someone like Kerry or Ed Muskie whose Presidential hopes have already come and gone. Hillary is unique among Secretaries of State in recent decades in that she’s held high elective office already, and is still a legitimate contender for the Presidency if she chooses to run. You can’t make generalities about a class of one.
“I never wanted to be Vice-President of anything!” - Nelson Rockefeller
Biden is older than all of those VPs, though. In fact he’s much older than most of them. He was 66 when he took office, which make him the sixth-oldest VP ever in terms of term-starting time. And I offer this only as trivia because I thought it was interesting: of the five VPs older than Biden, two died in office - 19th-century veeps William King (Pierce) and Elbridge Gerry (Madison). The other three - Nelson Rockefeller (Ford), Charles Curtis (Hoover), and Alben Barkley (Truman) died within four years of leaving office.
Anyway Biden could be compared to Cheney in that he was an older, more experienced VP added to the ticket to shore up the resume of a younger president. Part of the appeal was that the older VP wouldn’t compete with the president because he wouldn’t have designs on a future elected office. Compare that to the end of Clinton and Gore’s term or the problems Kerry and Edwards or McCain and whatsername sometimes had on the campaign trail. Which isn’t to say Biden and Obama will have problems if Biden runs, just that there are some reasons to think Biden could make the same choice Cheney did and not run. Of course his other two presidential campaigns blew up on the launch pad, so even if he does run…
This. Most voters who are dead set against a Hillary presidency are people she alienated during her husband’s 1992 Presidential campaign, back when most Americans probably thought that Biden was just a character portrayed by Kevin Nealon on SNL, and long before she was able to both get elected to the Senate from a major state and hold the country’s most prestigious cabinet position. Also, just about everyone has probably already chosen which side they want to believe about Benghazi. When you consider that she is a three dimensional candidate being compared to a group of (for now) one dimensional mascots for the various factions that presently make up the GOP, I think her poll numbers are particularly impressive. At this point the only thing that can probably hurt her would be if the economy deteriorates between now and then in a way that can be blamed on the Democratic platform (as opposed to just being perceived as Obama’s fault, as I don’t think he has managed to be viewed as iconic enough in his own party that any mistakes he makes will automatically become political baggage for the Dems in 2016).
As a reminder, because some people need one: a large majority of people believe the non-Obama/Clinton coverup version.
two pieces of news that should give Democrats pause about Clinton:
She’s clearly K Street’s favorite Democrat:
She’s also clearly conservatives’ favorite Democrat, with 25% willing to vote for her:
I think this quote is relevant:
The lobbyists are backing her not because she’s tight with **them **but because she’s far more likely to win and thus **they **want to get in tight with her. (Which is not to say that she’s completely free of lobbyist influence, but then show me someone in Washington who is).
Why is that a bad thing? She’s big with liberals and moderates and tolerable to non-crazy conservatives. Sounds like exactly the sort of person to elect President, non?
You’re right on both counts the way I see it, but I don’t think every liberal will see conservatives’ favorite Democrat, or K Street’s favorite Democrat, as the one they want.
You’d think my partial endorsement would change some minds too.
If she’s elected, the Republican Congress and her are going to do great things. We’ll reform welfare a little more, pass more free trade agreements, cut spending and the federal workforce, deregulate, and maybe we’ll even throw in a tax cut.
She’s also liberals’ favorite Democrat for 2016, and moderates’ favorite Democrat for 2016.
Neither of these things are negatives, and you are really grasping at straws.