Rich Lowry of National Review Online examines the Democratic Party establishment’s recent track record of choosing presidential candidates.
After 2016, the Democratic establishment would have been justified in getting out of the business of presidential politics.
It swung so strongly behind Hillary Clinton that it discouraged any serious contenders from getting in the race. Her competition was a motley collection of people who didn’t get the message or didn’t care — including a no-hope socialist from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.
Because politics abhors a vacuum, Sanders became the anti-Hillary candidate and the leader of a movement that, four years later, threatens to take over the Democratic Party.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. Fortified by endorsements from anyone who mattered and the lockstep support of Democratic donors, with even the debate schedule fashioned to suit her interests, Hillary won the nomination as scripted — and proceeded to lose the general election to a rival who had a 37% approval rating on Election Day.
Having thrown in with an underperforming candidate in 2016 who had been a fixture in national politics for decades and never shown much ability to inspire voters, the Democratic establishment in 2020 turned to . . . Joe Biden.
No one was clearing the field this time around; in fact, the opposite. So, if the former vice president is as forlorn as he currently seems, he’ll be an asterisk in a field that moved on without him, rather than being propped up as the nominee despite his manifest weaknesses.
Perhaps Biden will perk up once the race gets to more demographically favorable terrain in Nevada and South Carolina, but at this juncture, he looks like a parody of an overhyped establishment front-runner.
