TO BIDEN OR NOT TO BIDEN?
I wrote here early last month that this was Biden’s moment. Now Josh Kraushaar joins in at National Journal.
We have learned something from Bernie Sanders other than the liberals’ bottomless appetite for political pap. Sanders has demonstrated the large space that exist for a plausible Democratic alternative to Madam Hillary. An avowed socialist is not a plausible alternative. The space is therefore now occupied by a vacuum. I think the vacuum will be filled, but by whom?
A plausible alternative to Madam Hillary would have to be liberal and able to pronounce the regnant shibboleths with conviction, of course, but he would also have to be likable and honest in his own way in order to distinguish himself from Madam Hillary. Joe Biden seems to me the likeliest Democrat to fill the space created by Hillary’s candidacy. Indeed, Monica Crowley now infers from a few shards that Obama is setting the stage for a Biden candidacy. She asserts that Obama is taking Hillary out.
Biden, let it be noted, is 72. Because Barack Obama ended the careers of so many younger Democrat officeholders only the geriatric contingent like Biden are plausible alternatives to Madam Hillary. We know Biden possesses the ambition to be president. He would be a fool not to challenge Madam Hillary. He’s not the brightest bulb in the room, but he’s no fool.
It would be a mistake to overlook John Kerry in this context. He’s a certified member of the geriatric contingent at a relatively spry 71. He too possesses the ambition, and he may take home a Nobel Peace Prize this fall to burnish his résumé. He performed remarkably well as the Democrats’ candidate against George Bush in 2004, but he is not likable and he is a fool. Whether he knows it or not, his time has passed.
That leaves Elizabeth Warren. She feeds the liberals’ bottomless appetite for pap like a born demagogue. She can feed the appetite to great effect seemingly at will. She either lacks the will to challenge Madam Hillary or thinks that her moment has not yet arrived.