A BIDEN ME

Donald Trump must be celebrating tonight. He dare not ask for a better opponent during the 2020 election that Joseph “Hands” Biden. Odds are this will totally suck the oxygen out of the room for anyone not named Sanders and Biden. In many ways this is remarkably similar to the 2016 election where Hillary Clinton also sucked all the oxygen out of the room. The result was that Democrats chose a horrible candidate who managed to lose to someone they considered to be the worst possible Republican candidate. Democrats, who never seem to learn, are about to repeat the mistake.

Biden has run for President on several occasions and failed miserably. Technically this is his third real attempt. The first time was in 1988. You probably don’t remember this because few people noticed in 1988 either. Then he ran again in 2008 only to withdrawn almost immediately. He never got any significant percentage of the vote. His opponents were Hillary “Loser” Clinton and Barack Obama who had zero executive experience. Neither paid any attention to him as a candidate and Obama chose him as VP because he knew Biden would never come close to escaping his shadow.

There are numerous reports that Obama talked Biden out of running in 2016, probably because he foolishly though Hillary would be a better candidate. He pointedly has not endorsed Biden, or anyone else, this time.

With this field, odds are pretty high that Biden and Sanders will each both draw about 15% of the primary vote, not enough to win outright, but more than enough to leave the rest of the candidates in the dust. This could easily result in either of them winning the nomination while simultaneously turning off at least 40% of the Democratic base. The only other option is for Biden to move even farther left than Sanders, if that is even possible. That would turn off everyone else. This is clearly the worst case for Democrats, unless Hillary decides to run again. It is hard to suppress the giggle factor even saying that, but this is 2020 and it is your new and great Democratic Party.

Remember when John McCain won the Republican nomination in 2008? Remember that sick feeling in your gut when you realized that Republicans had chosen the candidate most likely to lose? Barack Obama was a terrible candidate and ten minutes of opposition research would have destroyed him. Yet, the only reason this was even close was that McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. He went to his grave thinking that was his worst mistake. He wanted Joe Lieberman. If McCain had run with Lieberman they just might have lost all 50 states. I think Democrats are likely to be equally thrilled with their selection in 2020.

While the MSM considers Biden a strong candidate they are missing the part where people prefer someone with a personality. Even a bad personality would be preferable to Biden. In addition, he is just plain creepy. There is a reason he failed miserably in 1988 and even more miserably in 2008. He sucks big time on the campaign trail. In addition they have so much crap on him that the big dilemma is when to start using it.  My hunch is that they are so unimpressed they won’t bother, unless he actually gets the nomination.

In the meantime, if Trump is not thrilled, he is not paying attention.

TDM