The Democratic Party is facing down a major lack of enthusiasm among traditional Dem voters. Women have been tuning out since March. Millennials will likely leave the Party when Bernie Sanders does, and now, the Observer reports, exit polls from recent primaries show Democrats losing men – the largest and most important voter demographic – by more than 20 points.
Although Republicans even more likely to find their slate of candidates unappealing, enthusiasm among some Republican subsets remains high. Which means that the general election may be less of a sure thing for Democrats than many are assuming.
But where do Dems have to turn? Hillary Clinton and her “woman card” turn off voters on one side. Bernie Sanders might lose his sanity before he ever gets a chance to lose an election. Is the solution Joe Biden?
In his interview at Stanford, John Boehner speculated that Biden could be the Democrats’ “Hail Mary” pass, predicting that President Obama could orchestrate a two-weeks-before-the-DNC debut with Biden sweeping in to rescue the Democrats from Hillary’s clutches. John Boehner would know: he’s been working Joe Biden since last year. They aren’t besties like Boehner and golfing buddy Trump, but they will share an award for their “exemplary partnership” at Notre Dame’s commencement in May.
As for whether Biden is considering an eleventh hour declaration, well, he’s been more visible of late than you’d expect a lame duck Vice President to be. This week, while President Obama prepared his speech for the White House Correspondents dinner and Defense Secretary Ash Carter held down the Oval Office, Joe Biden, wearing his trademark Aviator sunglasses, visited Iraq to meet with leaders there and push for national unity against ISIS.
A visit to Iraq would also happen to be a great way to brush up on the current state of the Middle East if one were to, say, need such expertise in a Presidential debate.
Biden has also been heavily involved in domestic policy of late, demonstrating a serious interest in early performance testing for the Tesla (he lost $10 betting that it would lose in a drag race to a Cadillac CTS). And he’s been addressing difficult policy issues in recent interviews, talking in depth about tax reform and the Recovery Act, and addressing Bernie Sanders’s claims about the Obama Administration directly.
He even did one better than Sanders, who snagged a third party invitation to the Vatican and then engineered an extremely brief meeting with Pope Francis; Joe Biden talked seemingly at length to the Pope about cancer care in the wake of his son Beau Biden’s death.
There are even rumors that Biden has been quietly engaged in a year-long project to unite the Democratic party, which could come in handy if he needs to convince an angry swath of delegates, at each others throats over who should get the nomination, that he has the power to keep everyone happy.
All he has left to do to declare his candidacy is to haul out his Firebird for polishing and prep the Natty Lite kegs for Philadelphia. He came close at the White House Correspondents Association dinner after-parties, both live and in cardboard cutout form.
