As I was hitting the beach in South Carolina last week, the Washington Post column from Paul Goldman and me was hitting the page. Our aim? To stir the pot…just a little. We wonder if the vagueness of Virginia election law might allow for a few late and surprising entries in the presidential sweepstakes. Such things have happened before:
[Sen. Robert Kennedy] originally declined to run for the party’s nomination. But the New York senator changed his mind — and jumped into the contest — after underdog Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota nearly defeated heavily favored incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. LBJ’s 48-42 shockingly close winning margin is the definition of a Pyrrhic political victory.
Recent New Hampshire polls show presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with 44 percent and little-known Sen. Bernie Sanders at 32 percent. Amateur historians predictably compare the populist liberal Vermont lawmaker to McCarthy. It makes for fun reading.
But Sen. Kennedy’s opportunist 1968 move raises a serious legal question about Virginia’s current election laws: Could Biden, Warren or, say, California Gov. Jerry Brown (a late entrant in the 1976 nomination contest) make a similar late entry into Virginia’s March 1 Democratic presidential primary?
And we can’t forget Ike, either.
We think there’s enough wiggle room for a late entrant to appear. This doesn’t mean one will — the summertime fireworks coming from Bernie Sanders may be pretty, and even entrancing. But it’s also a case of peaking early, with the ultimate beneficiary being Hillary Clinton.
Or so conventional wisdom tells us.
If someone like Sanders can continue to steal energy, attention, and ultimately votes, from Clinton — a very big “if” — it may give other Democrats who have begged off running a reason to reconsider.
Senator Warren, call your office. Quietly.
