I’m fairly confident that either Rubio or Cruz will be the Republican nominee for president. But I can only speculate on how the Democratic primaries will play out. With Hillary and crew squaring off in their first debate tonight, here is my best attempt at organizing my thoughts on the race around answers to basic questions.
Will Biden enter the race? His doubts about his emotional durability are authentic, but he clearly wants to run. The revelation that it was Joe himself that leaked the story of Beau Biden’s dying wish to Maureen Dowd confirms this. If he really thinks he can win, he’ll decide that the best way to honor his promise to his son to “be OK,” as he related in his heartrending Colbert interview, is to throw his hat into the ring.
Can Biden win? Hillary’s performance in Tuesday’s debate and in her testimony before Congress on October 22nd will tell us a lot about whether the email scandal and lack of enthusiasm behind her campaign are potentially fatal vulnerabilities that Biden can exploit, or surmountable obstacles of the kind that that many frontrunners in history have overcome.
The debate offers her the chance to shine in the only way she knows how: through showing the breadth and depth of her policy knowledge. If you haven’t already, watch this video of her debating activists from Black Lives Matter. She was her edgy, wonkish self; uniquely compelling, if not dreamy. If she can access that version of herself on stage when talking about Wall Street and foreign policy, it will really help blunt the sense that she is out of step with true-believer Democrats and remind them why they’ve loved her all these years. And Bernie’s apparent refusal to prepare for the debate with mock sessions doesn’t bode well for his performance.
With at least two more scheduled email dumps and the possibility of the 30,000 “personal” emails that Hillary deleted seeing the light of day, the Congressional testimony will be her last best chance to shape the narrative of the scandal. Based on how repeatedly defensive she has been in talking about this issue thus far, I’m not optimistic that her testimony will be much different. But if she can find a way to accept culpability while making Republicans look like they are on a witch hunt, I think she will eventually survive what will regardless be a vexing story for her campaign for months to come.
If Hillary can make touchdowns out of these these two big events, Democrats will dial back their panicking enough for a Biden candidacy to suddenly seem necessary. But if these events simply reinforce everything that’s happened to her public image since the spring, demand for Biden among a lot of donors and party regulars will rise to a clamor. He won’t refuse.
What percentage of the electorate will never abandon Hillary, no matter what? This will be the most important question if Biden announces a candidacy. By the end of the 2008 campaign, her reporters were almost as devoted as Obama’s. Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like her following among core constituencies will leave her just because Joe runs. I’d say that if her loyal base makes up 30% or more of the Democratic primary electorate, Joe doesn’t have a chance. But if her support is softer than that, he could win on force of personality.
Can Bernie win the nomination? Probably not, and only if Biden enters the race. Bernie's ideology is out of step with most Dem voters, and he hasn’t shown an ability to gain support from anyone except the kinds of people who used to read the Daily Kos every day. His views on guns are a vulnerability. After spiking in July and August, his numbers have leveled off in the last month. He needs a second act, and unless he attacks Hillary directly, I’m not sure what it's going to be.
But Bernie's campaign has taken on a movement-like quality and his supporters will stick with him until he tells them to stop and to go vote for someone else. He has raised $24 million through small-dollar donations from a huge pool of people, so he can keep going back to them again and again. He has personal appeal that will make some voters who don’t necessarily agree with his economic worldview consider giving him their vote. And he’s polling quite well in Iowa and New Hampshire; if Biden enters the race, he takes all his support from Hillary, not Bernie. With Biden and Hillary splitting the mainstream vote, Bernie could conceivably win both early states. Anyone who does that has a shot at the whole thing.
So what will happen?I really have no idea how things are going to go for Hillary tonight and for the next couple of weeks. On the one hand, she’s been taking such a beating for the last several months that the timing feels right for the narrative pendulum to swing back in her direction a bit. On the other hand, she’s handled the email scandal so poorly and there isn’t any reason to believe she’ll get better. And as big of an opportunity as the debate is for her, it’s also a risk for her to be on that stage surrounded by Bernie and 3 also-rans who have nothing to lose.
Ask me again in a month. By then, we’ll have a much better sense of Hillary’s strength. More importantly, we’ll know whether Joe is running or not (by early November, a candidate needs to start taking logistical steps to get on primary ballots).