5 Reasons Why Joe Biden Should Run for President

I love Joe Biden.  There is perhaps no other living politician that I have consistently adored for longer than the Vice President of the United States.  I may have flashes of other politicians who tend to be toward the top of the list (right now POTUS and Claire McCaskill), but Joe has never left the top five.  He seems like a genuine, kind, honest politician-the kind you want to run for president, even though you mock incessantly when they proclaim something a big f@#^ing deal (even though it was!).

This all being said, I've been reluctant about endorsing the Vice President for a run for the Oval Office. It's clearly not that I don't think he'd make a fine Chief Executive, but it's just that after all of these years I don't know if he could do it.  He's run unsuccessfully for the White House twice (in 1988 and 2008), both times crashing out.  He will be 74-years-old in 2016, older than Ronald Reagan was when he sought reelection.  Even if his health could handle it, he's been through an emotionally rough summer losing his son Beau to cancer, and his campaign approach in an era where everyone has a cell phone and can create a meme isn't the finest.  All-in-all, I've been apprehensive about what he would bring to the race.

However, the past few weeks have made me change my mind, and if Joe Biden wants to get into the race, I say the Democrats should embrace him with open arms (note I said embrace, not yet endorse).  There is a clear gap in the Democratic Party primary right now, and in some ways in the general election that only Joe Biden can fill.  If you need more convincing (and I'm guessing you do), here are five reasons I think that Joe Biden should run for president.

1. Hillary Clinton Desperately Needs It

If there is one thing that we have all noticed this cycle aside from the Donald Trump circus act, it's that Hillary Clinton is not ready to be a candidate for president yet.  She's certainly ready, I think, for the Oval Office and probably has been for decades, but every concern that we were worried about Hillary Clinton having has reared its ugly head.  She's too cautious.  She's reluctant to speak to the press.  Her inner circle clearly has an echo chamber effect (there's been WAY too many surprises continually trekking out about her email scandal, which should have died months ago).  All-in-all, she's running the sort of campaign that basically guarantees that those that aren't impenetrable in their Hillary love will look elsewhere, which is why we've seen the rise for Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Socialist who would be anathema to a general election audience.

Joe Biden does something to Hillary Clinton's campaign that no other candidate that is actually looking at the race does-he makes Hillary Clinton compete for the nomination.  Bernie Sanders could well win a surprise in Iowa or New Hampshire, but the powers-that-be won't let him make it past Super Tuesday.  The sitting Vice President, however, has a different sort of accord.  Joe Biden wins Iowa and New Hampshire, and Hillary Clinton is in a pickle-he's also a longtime Capitol operative, he's someone who can satisfy liberals without having the "unelectable" argument that Bernie Sanders would.  Yes, keeping Joe Biden under control on the campaign trail is going to be tough and he's going to have to be more disciplined about actions that could read like an Onion article, but Joe Biden is actually able to work and change his ways in a way that Hillary Clinton never has been able to do.  Even if he loses the primary, he'll have given Hillary Clinton a serious testing as a candidate, and will have forced her to change her approach, making her stronger for the general election.  The Democratic Party needs that, because Clinton v. Sanders isn't going to provide it and Hillary Clinton doesn't seem willing to change, which could be rough against a clearly ready Jeb Bush.

2. He's Wanted It His Whole Life

Joe Biden's home may be the Senate (or Scranton, Pennsylvania, whichever you want to go with), but his heart has always been set on the Oval Office.  You don't run twice for the presidency, particularly after the embarrassing plagiarism scandal of 1988, without clearly wanting it in your bones.  There's a part of Joe Biden that also wants to ensure that his name goes on the White House and not a repeat one like Clinton or Bush.  Biden's boot straps story counters Marco Rubio's much better, and certainly goes against Jeb Bush with much more moxie.  His age is going to be a concern, but if he's healthy he can pull the "youth and inexperience" card without too much worry-after all, it was first played by the right's hero Ronald Reagan.

3. No Democrat Can Run Away from Obama

Some have argued that Joe Biden's ties to the president could be a detriment-the Democrats need someone who can distance himself from the president to figure out a way to win a rare third consecutive term in office.  However, as John McCain illustrated in 2008, there's no running away from your party label.  No Republican in the country could argue more strongly that he was not George W. Bush than John McCain-the two had been arch-rivals for a decade at that point.  However, John McCain consistently was forced to wear the badge of his party's presidential candidate, and it clearly hurt his candidacy.  Whether it's Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or even Bernie Sanders, the Democrat who runs is going to have to take with him or her the goods and the bads of the Obama presidency.

4. Biden is a Better Heir to Obama's Legacy

Let's be honest here-President Obama is still wildly popular in the Democratic Party, perhaps in a way that no other president has been since JFK.  He has represented a change in the way that the Democratic Party operates, a boldness in leadership that someone like, say, Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter have lacked.  As a result, there are a lot of Democrats who not only want to win the White House for a third term, but they also want to win it with a Democrat who fits the Obama legacy.  While Hillary Clinton served in the POTUS's cabinet and would clearly be called part of his legacy were she the nominee, Joe Biden is far-and-away a more obvious successor in that regard.  He's been with the President the entire eight years he'll have been in office.  He's not part of an "American Royal Family" in the way that Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush are, and Barack Obama wasn't.  He's clearly been someone who not only championed the president (look no further than the spectacularly combative way he handled the 2012 debate), but also someone that pushed him outside his comfort zone.  That big f---ing deal line showed he wanted the president to take more credit for what he was doing for the country, which he eventually started doing.  The leak on gay marriage may have roiled some in the White House, but it caused gay marriage to become a part of the Democratic Party's fabric, and Joe Biden is almost certainly responsible for it being legalized nationally this year, perhaps more than any other person.  Hillary Clinton is not a risk-taker in the same way as Obama or Biden.  The Vice President is also someone that Obama clearly likes better and sees more as a partner in his vision, as the Clintons and the Obamas have long been viewed as adversarial.  The Democrats have enough passion behind these candidates that they'll coalesce quickly behind either, but Obama Democrats know that Biden is a more appropriate successor to their guy's mantle.

5. Everyone Loves Joe

Gov. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) with VP Biden

One of the biggest factors in Biden's favor is that he is insanely well-respected on Capitol Hill.  He and Mitch McConnell get along splendidly.  Sen. Lindsey Graham calls him the best man he's ever known in politics.  While President Obama has long been called elusive and difficult when it comes to nabbing votes and wooing Congress, Joe Biden is an old pro at it.  This is important for two reasons.  One, Hillary Clinton has been making this a big part of her pitch to the party bigwigs-you will finally have an ear in the White House, someone who is out there campaigning, working on party-building, and wants to bring the Democratic caucus back into the executive branch's fold.  Having Joe Biden also making that same pitch, but with far more years of experience in doing so, will undermine her.  Secondly, it will throw a gigantic monkey wrench in the battle for superdelegates.  Hillary Clinton may have a lot of members of Congress who have gone out-of-their-way to endorse her, but there's still a lot of endorsements throughout the party to be had, and Joe Biden could lock them up.  And lest we forget, there's still the Veep slot to be given.  Many Democrats assume Clinton wouldn't pick a female running mate, but it's almost certain that Joe Biden would.  Major Democratic leaders like Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Maggie Hassan may start to reconsider how vigorously they want to support Hillary Clinton if they know that they'll be at the top of a potential VP shortlist.  I'd go so far as to speculate that this is what has held up Hassan from endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016, despite her getting behind the New York senator quite quickly in 2008 (Hassan was critical in getting Clinton the win in the primary there, and the Clintons returned the favor by heartily endorsing her for the governorship).  As a swing-state governor of a critical primary state and the only female Democratic governor in the country not in her first-term, she'd likely be the frontrunner in a Biden running mate search.  Democrats are self-interested enough to know things like that, and that could harm Clinton's superdelegate march.

All-in-all, this seems like a pretty compelling argument as to why Joe Biden should run for president.  I'm not yet making the argument that he would win, or that he should win (Hillary Clinton still polls better), but the dynamics are pretty juicy for a man who has wanted to be POTUS his entire life to turn down on what his assuredly his last shot at bat.