2016 is a long way away, but speculating is a lot of fun. I chose the above clip to give you some idea of how far we are from the 2016 presidential election. It's not quite from the same point in the election cycle, but it is revealing. In December of 1973, Jimmy Carter was able to appear on a national game show without being recognized by anyone on the panel. At the end of the video they make reference to his role in preparing the Democratic party for the 1974 midterm elections. Less than 3 years later, he was elected 39th President of the United States.
A. The Donkeys have an Elephant, and the Elephants have a Bunch of Asses.
When David Duchovny left The X-Files, the writers were faced with a big story dilemma. The show was driven by the conflict between a skeptic and a believer in all sorts of nut ball ideas. To write Duchovny's character, Fox Mulder out of the show, but leave a possibility of returning, should the actor come to his senses, they needed his disappearance to be cooky and unexplained. This forced his partner, Scully, to disavow her skepticism and become a believer. After the first episode a review summed up the dynamic between the new leads. "Scully is now Mulder."
Well the race for the 2016 nominations are also a case of role reversal. Every Republican nomination since Watergate has been a case of orderly succession. The only exception was in the year 2000. The 1996 runner-up had been Steve Forbes. Forbes did not run in 2000. That nomination went to the son of a recent nominee, George W. Bush. It is because of this history that I give Rick Santorum more of a chance than most observers do. But he can not be called the clear favorite by any stretch of the imagination. He might not even belong on the top tier of candidates.
Will Rogers famously quipped, "I don't belong to any organized political party; I'm a Democrat." And most years the Democratic primaries live up to that aphorism. The typical Democratic primary process begins with a half-dozen of likely candidates battling for specific racial and economic demographics, with some regional factions complicating things. In 1976, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 2004, a nominee emerged from a field of around five serious contenders. Only twice since then the Democrats began with a heavy betting favorite. In 2000 Al Gore was the virtual certain nominee from the beginning and he only attracted one competitor, former Senator Bill Bradley. Bradley put up a decent fight but Gore won comfortably in Iowa and by four points in New Hampshire. The race was all but over and Bradley never won a single primary. In 2008 Hillary Clinton was also the presumptive nominee by most accounts. She faced a half-dozen challengers but non were taken too seriously. But unbeknownst to the chatter class of D.C., Barack Obama was building a brilliant strategy: win in Iowa, survive Super Tuesday. and squeeze as many delegates as possible out of the states where he couldn't win. By the summer, Barack Obama was the nominee.
The 2016 nomination race will probably end up looking like a combination of 2000 and 2008. The favorite is the same as in 2008, but the result is more likely to be like 2000. She will face credible challengers, and one or more of them will make Iowa and/or New Hampshire competitive. If any of them win one of those states, then we will have a race on our hands. If Hillary wins both, she will probably cruise to the nomination, and might just run the table the way Al Gore did.
My thesis at this point is that Democrats will nominate their previous runner-up and that the Republicans will have a battle among five to seven people with credible resumes and varying regional appeals. I think that Jeb Bush is their strongest general election candidate. His appeal is broad within the Republican factions but also very thin. Chris Christie, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz will probably elicit more passionate support but might have problems finding support outside their regional bases. Huckabee and Santorum probably need to win Iowa to survive. Luckily for them, the each have accomplished that very thing in the recent past, Huckabee in 2008 and Sanorum in 2012.
B: Another Peak at the Fields.
Some months ago I wrote posts on the likely contenders for each party's nomination. My intention was to go on the record with my first impressions of the candidates. The campaign will begin, for real, in the next month or two, and I'm sure I will update these lists more often next year. But I wanted to do one update before we know the results of the midterms, because next week's elections will probably shape the narrative of the election as it gets underway.
I. The Democrats: One Favorite, 2 Alternatives and a Sitting Vice-President.
Hillary Clinton is the heavy betting favorite to be the Democratic nominee. So far she has avoided any screw ups and there are some indications that she will learn from her 2008 mistakes and hire the very people who beat her the first time she was the heavy betting favorite for the nomination. I have not changed either of her numbers: she's almost certain to run, and has about a 70% chance of being the nominee. But one thing has changed in the last few months. I can now identify 2 plausible, serious alternatives. And then there's the vice-president.
I still do not think that Elizabeth Warren will run, but she is the clear alternative and the base loves her. I'm sure she has had many very serious (read: rich) people whispering in her ear that if she runs, they will open their checkbooks for her. Recently, for the very first time she indicated some hint of wanting to run. I think she might view a run as a way to put her ideas forward. She definitely thinks that the threat of her candidacy can nudge the party in the right (read: left) direction.
The biggest mover since my last posting is the emergence of Jim Webb as a possible candidate. I really hope that he runs because I think he would expand the intellectual breadth of the field by talking about issues that are not talked about enough, like prison reform. He's also the perfect candidate for pointing out that Hillary's foreign policy views are very far to the right of the Democratic party's base. It's a long trip from being Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy to being the darling of the Democratic base, but this Marine just might be the guy to do it.
And dear old Joe Biden is extremely likely to run. And you can never count out the sitting Vice-President if for no reason other than the uncomfortable fact that he is one heart beat away from running as an incumbent.
Soon after the midterms we'll probably hear more from the less likely candidates. So far no one has stood out as especially credible or promising. The two New Yorkers that I listed last time both took steps backward. Senator Gillibrand was listed mostly because she's an obvious alternative to Hillary Clinton if she didn't run. But as ever, there seems to be no let up in the Clinton machine. So Hillary will run and that will probably preclude a Gillibrand candidacy. Governor Andrew Cuomo meanwhile has proven to be a borderline boob who was lucky to be renominated for Governor. He can not win the nomination.
II. The Republicans: Lots of Options, None of them Particularly Good.
The Republican field, lacking a heavy favorite, is much harder to predict at this point. The biggest wild card as of now is Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. I leave him as a pretender for now because he might lose his re-election bid on Tuesday. Nate Silver says he has a 76% chance of being re-elected on Tuesday. If he is re-elected, even by a very narrow margin, he immediately becomes a serious contender for the nomination. He has been a semi-hero of the base for a few years and his proximity to Iowa could be a big asset But if he loses, he is toast.
The rest of the field has been very static. Jeb Bush does seem more and more likely to run, and I think he would be the party's strongest nominee. It's at least possible that the GOP will be so thirsty for a win by next year that they will overlook his heresies on education and immigration but the pitch forks will come out for him on a lot of fronts.
I've also added Mike Huckabee to the list of possible candidates because I think he has under appreciated appeal. He ran a solid third place in 2008 (second if you go by delegates pledged, rather than votes received) and probably could have been the nominee in 2012 if he wasn't busy paying of his mortgage by hosting a show on Fox News. When I see him lately he strikes me as a lot cockier than he was when he first became a national political figure. The confidence might push him towards running but it also might work against him with voters once he is actually running for the Presidency rather than just leading jeers against the current president.
Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz are all going to run. And they will all have sizable support in different corners throughout 2015. Any of them could be the nominee but any of them could also go up in flames early. Paul will have his father's donor base behind him, and that makes him a threat to gobble up delegates all along the way. If the field stays splintered, he could sneak in. But he's going to get a lot of heat about some of his less than orthodox views on war and crime. He'll also say lots of stupid things along the way.
But he's not really any worse of a candidate than the others. I do think he would be the worst president we have ever had, but that's not a disqualifier in this race. The nominee of this party is likely to be the person who can most convince the GOP primary voters that they hate Obama as much as they do. But then they will have to run in the general election with some kind of health care plan that doesn't take away the benefits from the millions of Americans that received coverage under Obamacare. I don't think any of these candidates can thread that needle. But most of them are going to try and it will be nearly as amusing as watching a monkey try to fuck a football.
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