Decision 2016

Are we sure Joe Biden’s out of the picture?

May 25, 2016 By Paul Gleiser

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will each wrap up the nominations of their respective parties week after next. Primary season will come to a close as the votes are counted in California on the evening of Tuesday, June 7.

From there it’s off to the conventions on the way to the general election.

Again defying predictions, the Republican Party is fast coalescing behind its presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. There are some notable holdouts – the two former presidents Bush among them, together with members of the pundit class such as George Will and others.

But most of the members of the Republican leadership, who at one time said that they would never support Trump, are now recognizing that to withhold support from Trump is to provide support to Hillary Clinton.

If Donald Trump isn’t a unifying force within the GOP, Hillary Clinton surely is. In any event, Donald Trump will leave the convention in Cleveland in July with the party behind him.

And if I had to bet today, I’d bet that it is Donald Trump with his right hand raised and his left hand on a Bible in front of Chief Justice John Roberts on January 20, 2017.

But there’s a way I could be wrong.

In an ironic twist, Donald Trump has as much to fear from the FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton and the members of her posse as Hillary Clinton does. Word leaked this week that the FBI has for months been conducting a criminal investigation into Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe, you may recall, is a close Clinton confidante. A portion of the investigation deals with McAuliffe’s activities as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

This news didn’t leak by accident. It was leaked strategically and it’s very, very bad news for Mrs. Clinton.

Clinton’s nightmare scenario goes like this.

The weight of the evidence against her is so massive that if Attorney General Loretta Lynch seeks an indictment or if she doesn’t, the Democratic Party is damaged either way.

Seeking to mitigate that damage, Democratic Party leadership – keenly aware that Hillary is a terrible candidate, keenly aware that millions of Democratic voters would rather have Bernie Sanders, keenly aware that those voters might stay home if he’s not on the ballot, and keenly aware that Donald Trump has for a year now proved unstoppable – might very well give up on Hillary.

It is all too true that politics abandons its wounded.

It would be at this critical moment that the Democrats would turn to Joe Biden to save them. He could very well do it.

Joe Biden is a sitting vice president, is every bit as likeable as Hillary Clinton isn’t, and, unlike Hillary, enjoys the unwavering support of President Obama.

Pair him with Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and he would be very hard to beat.

It could be Joe Biden taking the oath on January 20.

Republicans who have been taking delight in Hillary’s FBI troubles might, therefore, want to be careful what they wish for.