An Endorsement, a Concession and a Far-fetched Prediction

It has been nearly eight months since I wrote about the 2016 election cycle.  In a sane world, it would be another eight months before I felt compelled to break that streak.  But we are now living in a world of more or less permanent campaigns and now that the front-runner has officially declared, I think it's worth going on the record with how I see the next 16 months playing out.  I will start with the race, such as there is one, for the Democratic Nomination.

1.  This Blog Endorses Lincoln Chafee.  He will not win. 

The foolish decision to invade Iraq in 2003 is the most important moment of this nation's history that I have personal memory of.  For the first time since the Polk administration, this country began a war not just of choice, but of naked aggression. And the consequences were disastrous. The United States lost 5,000 lives, several trillion dollars and untold prestige around the world.  The results for Iraq were much much worse, in human casualties and in future uncertainty.

Next year, I will probably vote for a woman who voted for that war in the presidential election.  But I have no intention of doing so in the primaries.  Luckily, there is one candidate with stellar anti-Iraq war credentials.  His name is Lincoln Chafee.  In 2002 he was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the authorization of force in Iraq.  He has since left the party. He was elected as an independent governor of Rhode Island and eventually registered as a Democrat.  I will be voting for him in the Illinois primary next year.  Dozens of others will join me.  But he has no chance of being nominated.  None.

Here's a look at the rest of the field:

1. The Nominee in Waiting: Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Hillary has been the presumptive 2016 nominee from the day she agreed to be Barack Obama's Secretary of State.  Although her tenure was short on specific achievements, she didn't do anything to compromise her standing with the party or the voting public.  So even eight months ago I wrote that she had a 70% chance of being the nominee. Since that writing, Elizabeth Warren has made clear that she will not run.  Senator Warren was always the most credible challenger to Hillary and it's now obvious that she won't take up that challenge. Vice-President Biden has also shown no interest in running. I didn't think he was likely to beat her in a competitive primary season, but he could have at least sucked up some of her donor and volunteer base. He also had the right to run as Obama's preferred choice, a role that would have helped him a lot in the primary.  I expect that Biden will try to keep a toe in the water just in case Mrs. Clinton screws up.  But he's not making the steps necessary to run. That may have been related to his son's health challenges but I don't think Beau Biden's passing will change his plans for 2016.  It's hard to put a precise number on Hillary's chances of being nominated but it is comfortably over 95%.

But Bernie Will Have  a Surge.

Bernie Sanders has been actively campaigning for weeks and a few polls have shown him putting up respectable numbers in New Hampshire.  He has also raised enough money to put up a respectable boutique campaign in the early primary states.  And there are plenty of young people who will trot out to Iowa to knock on doors for him.

But he can't win.  At some point he will probably have to choose between a serious effort in Iowa or New Hampshire.  Hillary will run big in both states.  Bernie will make the debates interesting and the media will desperately want him to make this race competitive.  If he loses New Hampshire by less than 10%, they will act like this race is a contested one. It is not.

Someone Else Will Have a Boomlet.

The rest of the field is remarkably weak.  That's not surprising given that most of the serious contenders to be President one day are sitting this one out rather than spend a year sleeping in motels only to get crushed by Hillary. Here's the rest of the field:

1. Martin O'Malley.  A mediocre governor of a medium-sized state.  He also picked the wrong year to run for President on the strength of having been a mayor of Baltimore.  His biggest claim to fame is being the basis for Mayor Carcetti on the Wire, a distinction that he loathes.  He did a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" and about half of the questions were about the Wire.  More damning than his fictional portrayal on that show is his horrific record as a stone cold war on drugs enthusiast.  He can't outrun that in a democratic primary.  He might have been a VP contender but I expect him to go all-in on the primaries and he might burn some bridges along the way.

2. Lincoln Chafee.  My aforementioned candidate of choice.  He is bright, moderate and competent. He is as exciting as a grilled cheese sandwich. He has no ties within the national party.  He won't break double-digits in Iowa and might not get there in New Hampshire either.  But like I said, a good man.

3.  Jim Webb.  Oh, this guy had promise.  He holds the Navy cross and he was Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy.  Pretty hard to swift-boat that, if he ever got the nomination. While in the senat he also took some principled stands on issues like prison reform. But he's a bit too "principled" when it comes to things like being unable to say the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism. I also doubt he will be able to connect with the left-wing of his party and I doubt he'll make a serious run anywhere.  But I do think he would elevate the debates and be an interesting candidate to follow.  But he can't win.

Predictions.
Hillary could run the table and win all 50 primaries, as Al Gore did over Bill Bradley in 2000.  And as Hillary did in the imaginary world of Bill Kristol's prognostications in 2008.  Bernie will carry Vermont and he might be able to pick off another state somewhere.  Jim Webb might carry Virginia or some oddball state like Oklahoma or some other state that does not matter in the general election.  And O'Malley could theoretically win Maryland, but I doubt it.  If I was making book, I would put the over/under for states won by Hillary at 48.5.

I haven't exactly made a lot of news in the blog post so I'll take one long term flier on Hillary's running mate.  I expect her running mate will come from Virginia, but it won't be Jim Webb. Mark Warner will be on the short list, but I think a better and more likely choice is Senator Tim Kaine.  He's a former governor, he's very smart and perhaps most importantly, he is fluent in Spanish. (He lived in Hondurdas for on year and has given the Democratic Spanish-language response to the State of the Union.)

So here comes the Far-Fetched prediction.
I think the GOP nominee will be very wise to pick Governor Susanna Martinez of New Mexico as his running mate.  The Republicans will need to do something to close the gap among Latin voters and women.  If the nominee is anyone other than Marco Rubio (it won't be Ted Cruz), then Susanna Martinez will make the most sense.

So here's the long shot prediction.  Next year, there will be a vice-presidential debate held in Spanish. And the next election will be decided by Latino voters. By the time the general election is underway, both parties will be vying for every last vote in Florida.  And New Mexico might become a swing state if the Republicans put Gov. Martinez on the ticket.  Yes, this will make head explode among the Fox News crowd, as so many things do lately.  But this is the way of the future and once the election is on the line, it will make sense for both parties.  The Republicans will probably need a long shot to come in and the Democrats would be crazy to decline the offer and risk alienating the fastest growing segment of their base.

Of course this won't happen if Donald Trump is the nominee.  But more about that in my next post.

The Donkeys Have an Elephant in the Room and the Elephants Have a Bunch of Jackasses Out in the Barn.

                                  Even Gene Shalit might not recognize our next president yet.

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.