2016 is all About the Guy Who's Not Running

That's always been clear.

"Joe Biden wouldn’t take the hint, and Barack Obama wouldn’t take “yes” for an answer."

"It was the fall of 2015, Donald Trump was rocketing up in the polls, Hillary Clinton was already wilting, and there was Obama’s vice president, occupying national center stage in an awkward public display of grief and political vacillation. Biden’s son Beau had died at age 46 that May, and the vice president was coping, it seemed, by throwing himself into a very open exploration of running against Clinton."

"To Obama, this was a big, unwelcome problem. He had picked Biden for the ticket back in ’08 because he didn’t want him to run for president again, and besides, he honestly believed Biden would be crushed by a defeat he viewed as inevitable.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-barack-obama-hillary-clinton-democratic-establishment-campaign-primary-joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-214023#ixzz4Em9JR6c9

Look, I love Joe Biden. But people forget your vulnerabilities when you're not running for President. Right now we have the Beltway narrative that Hillary is this terribly flawed candidate who is just lucky Trump is her opponent-anyone else could have beaten her.

I always laugh at this. Anyone? How about Ted Cruz? Well maybe not Ted Cruz. What about Jeb Bush? You think maybe a guy who can't even admit his last name is Bush might have a problem?

Ok so maybe Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush couldn't do it but anyone else could have. Like who, Little Marco?

Didn't Chris Christie unmask him pretty well? Yet there is this strange fallacy that the same GOP Establishment who Trump crushed so unceremoniously would beat Hillary with total ease.

As for Biden, the media forgets the feeding frenzy in 2012 when they kept asking if Hillary should replace Biden on the ticket.

If he is a better politician then she is why did he crash and burn in 2008 while she pushed a once in a lifetime politician to the finish-line while gaining 18 million votes if she's such a bad politician?

Ezra Klein has it right for why she is a very talented politician despite what the Beltway likes to claim.

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11879728/hillary-clinton-wins-nomination

Anyway, for Obama this is for the legacy and it was always clear to him that Hillary is the one to cement it.

"Still, this wasn’t personal for the president; it was business. Protecting his vulnerable accomplishments from the GOP wrecking ball and safeguarding his legacy have always been top priorities for Obama, and he had told friends as early as late 2014 that Clinton, for all her flaws, was “the only one” fit to succeed him. If Biden had come to him six months earlier—who knows? But it was much too late, and time to push Biden toward a graceful exit."

"The choice was long understood by the president’s confidants. “My supposition always was that when the smoke cleared, he would be for Hillary,” David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign message guru and former White House adviser, told me. “It was just in the air, assumed.” Another former top Obama aide added, “After the 2014 midterms, when he could sense the end … it was like, ‘Who gives me the best chance to win?’”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-barack-obama-hillary-clinton-democratic-establishment-campaign-primary-joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-214023#ixzz4EmCMM9fB

The big question for Americans in 2016: do we continue in the course Obama has set for us or do we go in a totally different direction, the direction of Donald Trump?

Obama has warned the country about going in the direction of either Right or Left wing versions of the Tea Party.

"One of the most important if hidden story lines of 2016 has been Obama’s effort to shape a race he’s not running in an anti-establishment environment he can no longer control. Over the past two years, he has worked quietly but inexorably on Clinton’s behalf, never mind the not-so-convincing line that he was waiting for the Democratic electorate to work its will. He has offered his former rival strategic advice, shared his top talent with her, bucked her up with cheery phone chats after her losses, even dispatched his top political adviser to calm the Clintons during their not-infrequent freakouts over the performance of their staff, according to one of the two dozen Democrats I interviewed for this story."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-barack-obama-hillary-clinton-democratic-establishment-campaign-primary-joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-214023#ixzz4EmDA2nX8

The important thing the 2008 Obama team got was first of all, do not wet the bed.

"Obama’s ultimate goal in his final year has been strikingly ambitious, according to those I spoke with: not only blocking from office the birther who questioned his legitimacy as president, but preserving the Democratic Party’s hold over the presidency during an era of anti-establishment turbulence. Obama, always one to embrace a grand goal, talks in terms of creating “a 16-year era of progressive rule” to rival the achievements of Roosevelt-Truman and to reorient the country’s politics as a “Reagan of the left,” as one of his longtime White House advisers put it to me."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-barack-obama-hillary-clinton-democratic-establishment-campaign-primary-joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-214023#ixzz4EmDtMrTV

A 16 year era of progressive rule. I like the sound of that.

We laugh at the GOP.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/07/paul-ryan-and-gops-day-of-shame.html

But in truth, if you look at Britain and Europe, the Democrats are the outlier in being such a stable, healthy party.

Compare this to the trainwreck that Labour is in Britain.