Out stumping for Hillary Clinton in Iowa, former Iowa
Sen. Tom Harkin suggested that Joe Biden better not start thinking about this presidency thing:
Mr. Harkin, who served with Mr. Biden in the Senate for nearly 25 years and is now supporting Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, said the vice president should not risk ending his career with what would be a third bid for the presidency.
“He has served the country so well and been a good friend of mine — I love Joe,” Mr. Harkin said in a phone interview. “I just don’t think this would be a wise move.”
Without prompting, Mr. Harkin added that there were “other ways Joe can serve the country.”
“With Hillary as president, I can see him being secretary of state or ambassador to the United Nations,” he said. “There are a lot of things he can do down the road that would be of valuable service to the country or the world.”
Why would Biden want to do those things? I suspect Yoni Applebaum
of the Atlantic is correct:
The emails that Clinton gave to the State Department are now being released in tranches every 30 days. Her server has been turned over to the Justice Department, which is reportedly optimistic that it can recover at least some of the emails that Clinton had deleted. No one knows what the emails that have not yet been released may contain.
No one, that is, outside of the administration. Those on the other end of Clinton’s correspondence presumably retain their own records of their exchanges. The White House has reportedly monitored the situation since before the questions over Clinton’s email became public. And the State Department has assigned a team to sort through the emails, reviewing them for classified information.
It's still early. I am confident that Hillary Clinton's campaign will not survive the year. There's almost no chance that the professionals in the Democratic Party are going to let Bernie Sanders be the standard-bearer. The Donks have no bench. If Joe Biden enters the race, he's going to be the nominee. He may be a buffoon, a plagiarist and an all-around demagogue, but he's not fundamentally corrupt. As far as we know, that is.
10 comments:
Should be real interesting to see who the Donks end up with at the top of the ticket, none of whom is qualified or has a positive favorability rating with the general public AFAIK. They will be pushing a big, smelly rock uphill and it will be a measure of their Kool-aid capacity, and their talent for self-delusion.
Anybody want to bet that they'll go find some obscure first-term Senator and cover him with fluff?
The plan seems to be a Biden/Elizabeth Warren ticket. I don't see any other senator or governor out there who could step in at this point. If they were to go that way, probably the best option the Donks have is Amy Klobuchar. Think about that.
Given that Biden has been active and a fellow traveler in the Obama administration, I don't know that I can be assured that he's not totally corrupt. Can't prove it in court yet, to be sure, but that will come when the Chinese release Hilliary's server to the world.
All the speculation and calculation about Biden's potential bid seems to leave out a massive variable - Hillary's reaction.
Somehow all the Biden talk seems to suggest the equivalent of his entry meaning her assumed exit. I doubt she'll comply that nicely. And then what happens when Hillary refuses to leave the race? She's built a massive financial lead and has locked up most (but not all, as the story you links to demonstrates) of the key figures/influencers. Just because Obama wants her to step aside and forgo the messiness of a completed FBI investigation, doesn't mean she'll go along for the ride. We've already seen her supporters did in their heels over the issue. Hell, she's openly mocking the investigation right now on the stump. Why on earth would she step aside for Joe Biden?
Unless Biden et al truly believe they can convince Hillary to quietly end her life-long quest for the presidency, the VP's window is narrowing with every passing day. Even now, I see no immediate reason why Biden won't end up on the ash-heap of Labor Day-esque candidacies like Wesley Clark, Fred Thompson and Rick Perry. He'll have to fundraise and build a campaign team while contending with a deeply flawed, but still strong, frontrunner.
Best case for the Dems if Biden runs - he wins the nomination but likely with the Hillary camp enraged and the scars from 2008 freshly opened.
Worst case for the Dems - Biden simply divides the field and Hillary inherits the nomination an even weaker candidate.
Either way, it'll fun to watch the other party implode for once.
Donald Trump announces he will seek the Democratic nomination for president the day after Hillary drops out.
Ringer, the way I see it, Biden only gets in if Hillary's campaign is mortally wounded. The Republicans aren't likely to cause that, but it's easy to envision a torpedo coming from the Obama administration. Obama knows exactly what Hillary has done, or hasn't done. He holds her fate in his hands. That's my operating assumption here. To use an analogy, Hillary is (potentially) Torricelli and Biden is Lautenberg.
Crankbait -- heh. Would be a better fit, I think.
A bit off topic, but it strikes me as very interesting that any number of people--not just myself--agree with our host that (a) President Obama has the goods on Hilliary, and that implies that (b) the President belongs in the Big House as well (and I'm not talking about Michigan Stadium) with her, but (c) nobody in the White House or Congress on the Democratic side appears to be breaking ranks. If we're reading things right, it's message control that makes the Gambinos and Columbos green with envy.
I guess it could be that there really isn't anything on Hilliary or the President, but it boggles the mind to think that she could have gotten relevant information she needed while accumulating a million miles in the air without a secure account--or without getting classified information on her private server.
I'm sticking with my earlier prediction; Obama does just enough damage to scuttle Hilliary's nomination, but not enough to put her in jail because it would put him there, too. And shame on the Democrats who aren't raising Hell about it.
Trump changing course and pursuing the Dem nomination would be a masterstroke for him, and could present a realistic path to the presidency. Though his leanings are more D than R, he won't appeal to the hard-line lefties in the party, but thumbing his nose at the elites in BOTH parties would appeal to large numbers on both sides (neither known to be particularly astute observers) and tap the anti-party animus that is coalescing. Plus it would inflate his ego to even higher levels.
Personally, I'm still of the belief that Trump doesn't actually want to be president; he doesn't want all the work that that would require. Declaring for the Dem ticket would buy him a few more weeks of the attention he craves, again without having to do any real work - and he can ride away with his brand bolstered and probably many lovely (and secret) parting gifts from both parties to make him go away.
I've been telling Republicans for months to "let up" on Hillary until AFTER she locks up the nomination and THEN let fly. Right now it seems that Obama is doing his best to torpedo her, just enough to keep her from getting the nod, and with nobody but himself to step in and save the day in a third term. Or maybe he thinks Biden is that third term that the silly ol' Constitution prohibits him from having.
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