Democrats are in a mild panic over Hillary Clinton.
Her polls are heading in the wrong direction. Voters in key swing states (including Virginia) don’t trust her. What is a party to do?
Dig the trial balloons out of the closet and let a couple of them loose. The New York Times devotes considerable front page ink, and a Maureen Dowd column, to the possibility of a Joe Biden candidacy. Is Biden testing the waters? Is he intent on fulfilling the promise he made to his dying son to make a run?
Perhaps. We’ll see if that balloon gains any altitude over the next couple of weeks. A word of caution, though: Biden always looks great on paper. Long time Senator, foreign relations chairman, Vice President. And when he hits the presidential trail…the wheels come off the El Camino.
Where else can Democrats look? If one believes former Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrats already have an answer in the current field: Jim Webb (because he’s such a bipartisan guy):
With more and more presidential candidates acknowledging the need to work together, we’re eager to hear how our candidates propose our leaders stop fighting and start fixing.
I am excited that Sen. Jim Webb has shown a willingness to eschew party politics in favor of a new kind of politics: the politics of problem-solving.
Webb has a bigger problem than the specter of an excited Joe Lieberman stalking him across the landscape: many people couldn’t pick the one-and-done Senator out of a police line-up. In Virginia. And those who can identify him are not all that impressed:
Alas, Mr. Webb. You made nary a dent on the average Virginian’s imagination…save for a group of Republicans who are still haunted, and disturbingly entranced by, your upset of George Allen in 2006.
We’ll know Democrats are serious about Mrs. Clinton’s problems when they start picking up the recent batch of stories regarding her emails and her timely (and lucrative) assistance to UBS and calling her out on them by name.
So far only Mr. O’Malley has been willing, however timidly and only recently, to mention Hillary Clinton’s name in a less than favorable light.
Should the others begin to do so — without reservation or qualifier — then Team Clinton will have a genuine mess on its hands.
The Clinton strategy, for years, has been to fob-off criticisms, attacks and slights as just the same old, Clinton deranged, rightwing nonsense.
It’s worked extremely well. And it will continue to work right up to the point where a Democratic contender starts echoing the charges (and, say, using the New York Times as a source).
This assumes the Democrats have a contender with the guts to say publicly what so many Democrats will only say off the record: Hillary has too much baggage to win (and her Nixonian way of handling things only makes it worse). So far, they don’t. O’Malley may do so eventually, but he’s not exactly lighting the world on far with his pitch. And Uncle Bernie? He may pack ’em in up North, but will he be able to win a single primary — or even place — south of the Mason-Dixon Line?
No. And Jim Webb? Right. Who is he again?
They won’t do it because they fear the Clintons’ wrath. It’s a powerful thing that lasts a lifetime. And for people auditioning for roles in a Clinton administration — or a 2020 run — inviting such trouble is daunting, indeed.
So we’re back to Joe. The only Democrat with the stature to take on Clinton and genuinely shake up the race. Right up to the moment he actually starts campaigning.
But Democrats had best start looking at their alternatives very seriously…because of history.
At this stage of the race in the post-World War II era, the Democrat seen as the safe bet, sure winner has almost always lost the nomination.
Only two — Walter Mondale and Al Gore — won the party nod, only to lose in the general election.
