Since 2004, the tables have turned rather dramatically. Instead of acknowledging just how badly the GOP ruined America's foreign policy and economy between 2000-'06, they chose instead to underestimate their opposition. In this, they remind me of no one as much as the Democrats during the tail-end of the Johnson Administration.
"It doesn't matter how unpopular LBJ and the war are," they told themselves. "There's just no way that the American people will elect Richard Nixon." If that sounds familiar, it should. That's almost exactly what Republicans told themselves in 2008. Instead of learning from their mistakes, they doubled down on their wishful thinking last year, with even more catastrophic results.
Much was made of Barack Obama's resume, as if that actually mattered. If experience was all it took to win a presidential nomination, Jon Huntsman would have faced Obama last fall instead of Mitt Romney. Not only was Huntsman a much more effective and popular governor, he had vast foreign policy experience that Romney didn't.
That's why conservatives should start taking Vice President Joe Biden seriously soon. He's almost certain to win the 2016 Democratic nomination and I'd give him better than even odds of ascending to the presidency.
"But what about Hillary," I'm sure you're asking. Well, I don't think that she's going to run for several reasons;
First, history tells us that the nomination is Biden's for the asking. The last three Democratic vice-presidents - Gore, Mondale and Humphrey - all won it, despite strong challengers. The last vice-president to run for the nomination and lose was Truman's, Alben Barkley in 1952, and he was practically a corpse when he announced.
Second, the Clinton legacy is something to be protected. Losing to the first serious African-American candidate for the nomination is one thing. Losing to Joe Biden, which she almost certainly would, is quite another. It may well be that Chelsea wants to run for something someday, which would be complicated if her mother decides to become Harold Stassen.
Third, Hillary is just a terrible national candidate. Yes, she was elected to the Senate twice, but she did it in a deeply blue state and beat two nobodies. Her presidential campaign was notable for the infighting within it, which was more focused than the goal of winning the nomination. And beating an incumbent vice-president is considerably more difficult than winning an open nomination.
Fourth, she's seen how much money her husband has made since leaving office, and she'll be leaving the State Department at least as popular Bill was when he left the White House. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Hillary has been talking to Colin Powell about how lucrative the private sector can be for a popular former secretary of state. Why damage that by running for a nomination she's unlikely at best to win?
Look, mocking Joe Biden is a lot of fun. I get that. I do it all the time. The difference is that I'm not running against him.
Also, as Ezra Klien points out in Bloomberg this morning, Biden is increasingly seen as a serious player;
In the continuing drama that is the Obama presidency, Biden often appears as comic relief. He’s the zany neighbor, the adorable uncle. As a result, his presidential ambitions, which burn brightly even today, have mostly been laughed off. Somehow, the sitting vice president of the United States, the former chairman of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, a man who’s on a nickname basis with many of the world’s most powerful leaders, is seen in many quarters as lacking the gravitas to be president.
Yet just a few days before he was giving dating advice on C-SPAN2, Biden again proved himself perhaps the most effective member of the Obama administration. He reprised his role as the White House closer, the guy who can cut a deal with the Republicans after everyone else has failed. In the end, Biden got Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to strike a deal that the White House was happy with. That’s something neither Obama nor Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had achieved. And it wasn’t the first time. Biden also helped close the 2011 deal that lifted the debt ceiling and the 2010 deal that extended the Bush tax cuts in return for fresh stimulus.
Biden’s skills as a campaigner are also considerable. According to Nielsen, his speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention won better television ratings than the addresses of either Bill Clinton or Obama (or Republicans Mitt Romney and Representative Paul Ryan, for that matter). His debate performance against Ryan bucked up anxious Democrats and arguably stanched the bleeding from Obama’s hapless initial appearance against Romney.
Republicans would do well to study Biden's performance in his debate against Ryan. Paul Ryan was presented as the GOP's most serious thinker, and Biden managed to dismiss him as if he were a contender for vice president of his junior high school class instead of the United States. And the chances aren't good that the Republican Party will put up a nominee even as smart as Ryan in four years.
Therein lies another serious problem for Republicans: The GOP's ongoing civil war.
The Tea Party and the Religious Right maintain that when the party nominates sane people (Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney,) they lose. Of course, they forget that George W. Bush ran well to the left of the party's platform and won twice.
Those elements of the party control enough of the primaries that, if they manage to work together, they can deny the nomination to someone actually capable of beating Biden. Jon Huntsman and Chris Christie seem to already be disqualified for the nomination, and I can't see another Bush being nominated anytime soon. Between his performance as Romney's vice-presidential nominee and his vote for last week's fiscal cliff deal, I'd suggest that Ryan is out, too. If someone like Marco Rubio stays on the Tea Party right, he can't be elected. But if he moves to the center, he can't be nominated.
Then there's the party's "next in line" tradition for the nomination, which heavily favors Rick Santorum. But Santorum would be crushed everywhere but the Deep South, and there's a very real chance that he'd lose the Carolinas and possibly Georgia, especially if Biden picks a Southerner as a running mate.
Republicans have also adopted the old Democratic playbook that cost them seven out of ten presidential elections between 1968 and 2004. In 2008, McCain had to run to the base so hard that he couldn't move to the center after the convention. And last year Republicans started playing the old Democrat game of "kill the frontrunner," which made Romney all but unelectable in the fall. It should also be remembered that almost all of Obama's attacks against Romney were first deployed by Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry during the primaries.
When I look at a hypothetical election, I look at the likeliest winner and ask myself "Who's going to beat him?" Combine that likely scenarios and conditions, and you'd be surprised how often it works.
It's almost unthinkable that President Obama will leave office anywhere near as unpopular as either Bush did, although I can't see him having approval ratings like Reagan or Clinton did. If Obama starts 2016 with a job approval of about 45%, that puts Biden way ahead of the GOP, who are almost certain to have another ruinous primary. Since I believe this economy is "the new normal," employment and GDP growth numbers will only have to be slightly better than they are now for the Democrats not to be hurt too badly by them.
Then there's the Republican brand. The Tea Party penchant for nominating unelectable Senate candidates is going to cost them their third consecutive clear shot at that body in two years. There's also a better than even chance that they'll lose more House seats when they historically should gain a lot of them.
And that goes to the single biggest problem conservatives had last year: Their outright refusal to recognize reality. They managed to convince themselves that they couldn't lose against Obama when the history and the facts told them something very different. When they didn't rationalize away evidence contrary to the narrative, they ignored it completely or ascribed it to some nefarious media plot.
Every instinct in my body tells me that they're going to the same thing in a race against Joe Biden. And I can't see how that ends well.
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