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Forget Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden Is the Democrats' Best Bet in 2016 - US
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http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/mark-davis/2015/04/24/forget-hillary-clinton-joe-biden-is-the-democrats-best-bet-in-2016?int=a39d09&int=a6ea09

Joe Biden Is No Joke
[image: Editorial Cartoon on Joe Biden]

Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy is beginning to look like an aging
bomber hit one time too many by flak. Her campaign is making that
ungraceful roll that precedes the fatal, disintegrating tumble. For
decades, the Clintons have been the Houdinis of American politics, able to
wiggle out of heavy chains to escape one death trap after another, always
emerging with taunting smiles. But this time feels different.

Yesterday, The New York Times­ ran a long investigative piece detailing how
millions in cash
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/23/us/clinton-foundation-donations-uranium-investors.html>
went to the Clinton Foundation from a Russian interest that needed a green
light from the State Department to corner the world uranium market. Former
President Bill Clinton received a jaw dropping $500,000 for a Moscow speech
from a Russian investment bank in charge of rating the stock of the company
pursuing the deal.

The Clinton money pipeline doesn’t look any prettier downstream. Sean Davis
in The Federalist reports on public filings showing that
<http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/02/the-u-s-constitution-actually-bans-hillarys-foreign-government-payola/>,
of the $500 million the Clinton Foundation raised between 2009 and 2012,
only 15 percent went toward programmatic grants (in other words, actual
charities). Some $25 million went toward travel, and almost $300 million
went toward “other expenses.”

[*SEE:* Editorial Cartoons on Hillary Clinton
<//www.usnews.com/opinion/cartoons/2014/06/16/editorial-cartoons-on-hillary-clinton>]


Clinton spokesmen are saying that there is not “a shred of evidence” of
wrongdoing. This was an unfortunate choice of wording, since the evidence
itself has been shredded, digitally speaking, when the former secretary of
state had her conflated public and private email accounts destroyed
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/27/politics/hillary-clinton-personal-email-server/>.


Perhaps no less fatal to Clinton’s chances is her inability to tap the
wellspring of enthusiastic support from millennials that has powered
Democratic candidacies from Howard Dean to Barack Obama. "Saturday Night
Live’s" Kate McKinnon’s recent portrayal of Clinton as deranged, power-mad
and delusional was in perfect tune with millennial sentiment. The worst
thing that can happen to a politician has happened to Clinton. She has
become a figure of fun.

So if not Hillary, then who?

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is a happy warrior. But O’Malley’s
inability to help elect his lieutenant governor as his successor has
reduced him from a middle-weight to a welterweight.

Elizabeth Warren’s firebrand style could be counted on to cement a
coalition of urban liberals with, well, more urban liberals, but the
Massachusetts senator’s appeal among socially conservative Hispanics and
blue-collar whites is questionable.

Jim Webb, the Reaganite ex-Marine turned populist liberal, is at best a
curiosity.

So who?

[*SEE:* Editorial Cartoons on the 2016 Presidential Elections
<//www.usnews.com/opinion/cartoons/2015/01/30/cartoons-on-the-2016-presidential-elections>]


At first, it may seem that the cupboard of candidates is bare. It is an
oddity of our times that we overlook the most obvious candidate, the man in
plain sight, who holds the job that automatically positions him to be the
frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

I refer to none other than Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., vice president of
the United States for these last seven years.

Yes, Biden can be a gaffe-prone goofball who makes cringe-worthy
statements, like the one about the prominence of Indian-Americans in
convenience stores. Yes, he can be a little weird, as we saw when he recently
nuzzled
<http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/18/heres-joe-biden-being-joe-biden-with-ash-carters-wife>
the wife of Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Yet, with no hints of scandal in his private life, Biden’s gaffes can be
explained away as endearing eccentricities. Jill Biden is smart and
articulate, a refreshing complement to her husband. In today’s confessional
style of modern politics, the inevitable candidate documentary will tell us
how Biden – who at age 29 had just won a startling, come-from-behind
victory to become a U.S. senator – was shattered by the death of his first
wife and baby daughter after their car was broadsided by a tractor-trailer.
We will all hear how Biden in his grief was tempted to resign, but was
persuaded by Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to keep to his senatorial
duties. More than anything, that somber story will be an antidote to
Biden’s current flighty image.

Biden has two other strengths. One is his deep relationship with public and
private unions and their deep pockets that other Democrats can only envy.
Hailing from a Catholic family in Scranton, Biden knows how to rouse a
union hall with over-the-top rhetoric, recently comparing Republicans to
Mussolini’s “blackshirts
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/joe-biden-blackshirts-unions-115897.html>.”


Biden’s other strength is that he is believed to have the behind the scenes
backing of President Barack Obama and his top aides. It is they, some say,
who made sure the world knew about Clinton’s email account. It is they, it
is rumored, who signaled to The New York Times and other liberal media that
Clinton is now fair game. Room needs to be made for someone else, someone
closer to the president and loyal to his agenda.

That someone is now on the sidelines, staying quiet, getting briefed,
coached and prepared for the moment when Clinton’s candidacy falls to
earth. At that point, Biden will come in as a white knight, without the
scuffmarks of a long primary.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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