DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- With the August conventions fast approaching, President Obama must soon decide whether to keep Joe Biden as his vice president or shift to Hillary Clinton. I think that the odds favor a change.
Let me explain why. Obama originally chose Biden as his VP because of the former senator’s decades of experience in the federal government, seen as necessary to offset Obama’s glaring lack of virtually any experience or accomplishment which might even remotely prepare him for the awesome burdens of the presidency.
Now Obama has three years in the White House and, while he is running from his record as hard as ever he can, he no longer needs a running mate whose experience would make the American people comfortable that he could step into the Oval Office should something happen to Obama. Besides, Biden’s performance as VP has not been such as to excite popular confidence in the prospect, however remote, of a Biden presidency. Biden is a nice man, intelligent, reasonable and easy to work with.
But, as everyone knows, his tongue often gets far out ahead of his brain, creating image and policy problems for the Administration. Finally, Biden presently brings very little to the table for Obama. He is from the northeast, most of whose states will vote for Obama anyway. And he cannot very well hope to deliver the Old White Man vote because that will almost all go to the Republican candidate.
So, from the cold-hearted perspective of political calculation, what good is Biden to Obama? From that same perspective, Obama’s prospects for re-election, while by no means poor, are less solid than he would have liked. He may very well feel that it would cost him little or nothing to put Biden aside and bring in a new running mate who could improve his re-election chances.
Enter Hillary Clinton. Hillary is the most popular figure in the Democratic Party. She was the nominee-in-waiting until Obama derailed her grand procession to 1600 Pennsylvania. She might have been his rival and a real thorn in his side throughout his presidency had she not given up her position as junior senator from New York to become his secretary of state.
From Obama’s point of view, this was a case of keeping your enemies closer. But why would Hillary give up a powerful senatorial position, where she was among the most influential of all senators despite her junior status in New York, for the weak and politically dangerous job of secretary of state?
The only answer that fits what I know of the two protagonists is that Obama wanted her under his control during his first term, rather than running loose in the senate where she could make trouble for him if she wished. But in politics, especially in Washington, you don’t get something for nothing. And I suspect, with no proof whatever, that what Obama gave was a promise to dump Biden in 2012 and give Hillary the number two slot on the ticket if she did well as secstate and if she and her husband did not work against Obama.
Now they are coming up to crunch time. Biden has a solid reputation as a loyal but loose cannon. Hillary has done well, at least in public, in what is a very very difficult job. Did Obama actually promise the VP job to Hillary and, if he did, will he keep his promise? Would Hillary even accept the nomination? She has lately said that she does not want to be president but anyone who believes that has an abiding commitment to the Tooth Fairy.
Obama cannot be confident of his re-election. Given his abysmal record, his only real course is to bolster and reactivate the support he enjoyed in 2008, among various minority groups, as he has been trying to do for a couple of weeks with college students. Earlier he played to his female constituency by fabricating a contraception issue – a clever ploy which netted him a double-digit lead among women.
But lately that lead has been shrinking. Naming Hillary would give him an unshakable lead within his female base, re-kindling their flagging enthusiasm at exactly the time Obama needs a lift. And a turn to Hillary would strengthen Obama’s base on the far left. After all, Hillary is quite the Marxist herself, having been Saul Alinsky’s protégé in college. He fluffed up her senior thesis by making available his still unpublished book to her so that she could include excerpts in her paper, the subject of which was the works of Saul Alinsky. The supportive Leninist even offered her a position in his organization after graduation, which she turned down in favor of Yale Law School. And we should not forget her own unsuccessful effort to impose a form of socialized medicine when she was first lady.
Then too, her core political organization and think tank, The Center for American Progress, was funded in part by George Soros and run by long time Soros/Clinton operative Harold Ickes. In short, the left would be quite pleased to have the conventional Biden replaced by one of their own, especially since this would place America’s most prominent female leftist in the Democratic catbird seat for the presidential nomination in 2016.
Any rational observer would expect Obama, his many Marxist associates and particularly the Soros network to be eager, not only to re-elect Obama but also to preserve and expand his transformative works in an American government which could be made even more socialist after his second term. This line of reasoning leads me to conclude that, especially if he seems to be losing to Romney in August, Obama will most probably turn to Hillary to help ensure his retention of power.