THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION IN 2016: HILLARY IS NOT INEVITABLE AND JOE IS ALWAYS LOTS OF FUN

8/19/13

This morning’s (i.e., Monday, 8/19/13’s, page A1) Wall Street  Journal reports in a front page story that Vice-President Joe Biden and his team are laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2016.  Mr. Biden is busy visiting places like New Hampshire and Iowa (to fulfill “longstanding commitments,” of course) while his people are considering strategic moves, including possibly starting up a “leadership PAC” that would spread money around to various Democratic politicians in order to curry their favor for a possible Biden run.

The conventional wisdom (which, by the way, isn’t always wrong despite the derisive connotation it carries, but I digress) holds that Mr. Biden is wasting his time, that he has no chance at wresting the nomination from the nearly already coronated Hillary Clinton.   While I am making no predictions, and if I had to bet at this juncture I would bet on Hillary’s getting the nomination, and probably the White House, the latter especially if the GOP continues to pursue its death wish by refusing to nominate Chris Christie, I would not be so quick to conclude that the Democratic nomination battle is over before it has started.

For those with short memories, we heard the same bullroar back in 2008.  It was Hillary’s nomination for the asking, everyone should just fold up their tents, or not even erect their tents, and go home.   She was the certain nominee.   But no one apparently told Barack Obama and his team.

To put a local and more recent spin on it, remember when, just a few months ago, Lisa Madigan was the sure Democratic nominee for governor of Illinois?   Unfortunately, while Ms. Madigan was primping and preening for her coronation, Bill Daley stepped in and made it a fight.   Either the prospect of such a fight, or the prospect of being governor of Illinois as it slides further down into its fiscal sinkhole, dissuaded the inevitable Lisa from running.   See, inter alia, my 7/16/13 piece, LISA MADIGAN WON’T RUN FOR GOVERNOR:  WOULD YOU WANT THE JOB?  Lisa Madigan is no Hillary Clinton, but Lisa’s dropping out teaches us much about making presumptions when it comes to politics…or anything.

On a more prosaic note, I get a chuckle when I hear one of the strongest objections to Joe Biden’s candidacy or objections to his becoming president…his age.  Mr. Biden will be 73 in November, 2016.  Hillary will be 69.  Yours truly thinks neither is too old to be president, but, even if you think that way, what practical difference is there between 69 and 73?   Either they’re both young enough or they’re both too old.

Again, as a former Republican president was fond of saying, make no mistake.   I am not predicting a Biden nomination.   I am merely arguing that we should not be making wholesale assumptions in 2013 about an election that will take place in 2016.   Hillary is not inevitable.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.