Making of the President 2016

I don’t want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come!

Although few serious politicians in either party had any doubt Hillary Clinton would make her second run for the White House in 2016, all speculation was put to rest when, on Sunday, April 12, 2015, Clinton released a two-minute video after 3:00 p.m. ET, at the end of which she said with a smile, “I’m running for president.”2

Hillary’s video started by featuring the multi-cultural, multi-racial, bilingual diversity theme, featuring a mix of unidentified, but happy, young, and attractive Americans describing in one or two sentences what was happening in their lives. Clearly, the video was an expensive, professional production that had been worked over extensively by Hillary’s campaign team working with media professionals to produce a carefully crafted message. Watching the video critically left no doubt that identity politics was to be a main theme of Clinton’s candidacy, the centerpiece of which was the goal to elect the first woman president.

Here is the unofficial transcript of Hillary’s video,3 annotated by noting the identity politics significance of including this particular “typical American” vignette:

UNIDENTIFIED WHITE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN working outdoors in purple jacket and jeans: “It’s spring, so we’re starting to get the gardens ready. And my tomatoes are legendary here in my own neighborhood. ACTION: Woman working in garden, on steps lifts up hands to sky, palms first. Smiles.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN (race or ethnic identity uncertain) with YOUNG GIRL: “My daughter is about to start kindergarten next year. So we’re moving just so she can go to a better school. ACTION: Mother and child together, child packing, child placing “FISH” letters in letter board.

1. UNIDENTIFIED HISPANIC MALE with YOUNGER HISPANIC UNIDENFIFIED MALE speaking in Spanish with English subtitle: “Mi hermano y yo estamos empezando nuestro primer negocio.” Translated: My brother and I are starting our first business. ACTION: Brothers placing pictures on wall. Standing together, looking happy, laughing.

2. UNIDENTIFIED WHITE MOTHER with FIVE-YEAR-OLD SON: “After five years raising my son, I am now going back to work. ACTION: Mother sitting with child on lap, reading a book. Mother standing alone, breaks into smile.

3. UNIDENTIFIED YOUNG AFRICAN-AMERICAN MAN AND WOMAN: “Every day, we’re trying to get more and more ready and more prepared.” ACTION: Couple unpacking toys from box. Husband standing next to wife, places hand lovingly on her obviously pregnant stomach. Husband says, “Big boy. Right now. Coming your way.” Couple smiles.

4. UNIDENTIFIED YOUNG TWENTIES-LOOKING ASIAN FEMALE: “Right now, I’m applying for jobs. It’s a look into what the real world will look like after college.” ACTION: Woman walking down street, finds address, and goes into business street-front door. Ends with woman standing inside, window in background, casually dressed, smiling.

5. UNIDENTIFIED TWO YOUNG MALES MALE: “I’m getting married this summer to someone I really care about.” ACTION: Two young white males walking down street, side-by-side, look happy. Close-up shows the hands of the two men joining together. Camera pans back to show two men continuing to walk down sidewalk, smiling, holding hands together.

6. UNIDENTIFIED YOUNG AFRICAN AMERICAN BOY: “I’m going to be in a play and I’m going to be in a fish costume. The little tiny fishes.” ACTION: Boy stands in front of living room couch. He places his hands together, palms touching, fingers upwards, and moves his hands in upward swaying motion as he sing-songs, “Two little tiny fishes.”

7. UNIDENTIFIED WHITE FEMALE, near retirement age: “I’m getting ready to retire soon. Retirement means reinventing yourself in many ways.” ACTION: Framed picture shows woman with man (supposedly husband) standing together. Woman stands outside by house, uses left hand to give “thumbs-up” motion. Woman is seen driving car from front-seat passenger perspective.

8. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (Brown Skin) UNIDENTIFIED WHITE MAN: Couple moving furniture in home, as woman says, “Well, we’ve been doing a lot of home renovations.” Man says, “But mostly we just really want to get our dog to quit eating the trash. Woman says, “And so we have high hopes for 2015, that that’s going to happen.” ACTION: Man and woman in home together, dog trying to open trash can to get contents out.

9. UNIDENTIFIED bald thirty-something MALE: I’ve started a new career recently. This is a fifth-generation company, which means a lot to me. This country was founded on hard work and it really feels good to be a part of that.” ACTION: Man walks through machine shop, stopping at machines, working.

10. HILLARY CLINTON comes on screen, standing in front of unidentified white-painted suburban-looking home, green hedge and bushes in background in front of house windows.

ACTION: Hillary speaks on camera, interspersed with scenes of Americans working, living, and playing happily together. Hillary voice-over continues uninterrupted, as soft music continues in background and camera cuts to everyday America scenes. Hillary on camera smiles, nods head gently in “Yes” bobbing motion.

HILLARY DIALOGUE: “I’m getting ready to do something, too,” Hillary says. “I’m running for president. Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.”

Hillary continues: “Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion. So you can do more than just get by, you can get ahead and stay ahead, because when families are strong, America is strong.”

Hillary concludes: “So I’m hitting the road to earn your vote, because it’s your time and I hope you’ll join me on this journey.”

VIDEO ENDS WITH “HILLARY LOGO—Two Blue Columns, Red Arrow Pointed Right Penetrates Blue Columns, “Hillary for” words printed in white on red arrow, with “America” printed in Blue at arrow tip. Hillary dressed in blue jacket and red blouse, matching logo colors. Thin gold necklace and modest gold earrings. Casual outdoor look, clothing appropriate for spring weather.

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 2 minutes, 13 seconds.

The obvious point of the video is to put on display happy images illustrating the many combinations embraced by Democrats’ multi-cultural, multi-racial diversity agenda, emphasizing independent white women with and without husbands or families, an LBGT male same-sex happy union, bilingual Hispanics opening an entrepreneurial small business without any reference to whether or not their immigration status is legal, as well as Asian Americans and Americans of uncertain or mixed racial and/or ethnic identity being part of traditional families, in one-parent families, or simply making it on their own, even as children.

This has become the Democratic Party’s mantra insisting upon an affirmation that the traditional family is obsolete, that marriages must embrace the LGBT agenda, that all races as well as all ethnicities can and should mix in all possible multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic combinations. The point is that Hillary launched her presidential campaign with a video that framed her in a Middle America suburban setting, while hoisting her onto the pedestal of identity politics. The utopia represented by this video is a borderless USA that rejects traditional definitions of relationships with the result that everybody has a home, an education, as well as a job, hobby, and/or avocation, such that we blend into one big happy family. Anything that threatens this agenda is by definition sexist, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim—in other words, evil.

The New York Times article reporting on the video stressed that before Clinton’s campaign made the video public announcing Hillary’s formal decision to run for president, John D. Podesta, Hillary’s campaign chairman, contacted top Clinton donors and longtime associates. Podesta is a well-known Washington insider, a long-time Democratic Party liberal operative with credits that include founding the leftist think-tank known as the Center for American Progress, CAP, as well as working as chief of staff for President Bill Clinton in the White House, and serving as a counselor to President Barack Obama.

The video was only the media launch. Shortly after, Hillary staged a public event so she could give a policy speech as part of the in-person announcement of her candidacy.

On Saturday, June 13, 2015, Hillary launched her campaign in-person with a large outdoor rally on Roosevelt Island in New York City’s East River, between Manhattan Island on the west and the borough of Queens on Long Island to the east. Hillary, dressed in a bright blue pantsuit, gave the speech standing at a podium that from above could be seen to be her campaign logo. Critics viewing photos of the rally from above derisively commented that Hillary’s logo, especially here in New York City, brought to mind the twin towers penetrated by an airplane, recalling the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The Clinton campaign estimated that the crowd attending the event numbered some 5,500 people, though about half that many may have been more accurate.

“Under sunny skies and surrounded by flag-waving supporters on Roosevelt Island in New York, Mrs. Clinton pledged to run an inclusive campaign and to create a more inclusive economy, saying that even the new voices in the Republican Party continued to push ‘the top-down economic policies that failed us before,’” Amy Chozick reported for the New York Times.4

Clinton’s speech was written to remind voters of her government service as a New York senator, and as Secretary of State, with the United Nations building visible in the background. “To be in New York with my family, with so many friends, including many New Yorkers who gave me the honor of serving them in the Senate for eight years,” Clinton said. “To be right across the water from the headquarters of the United Nations, where I represented our country many times.” Then with an allusion to FDR—still a Democratic Party hero—Hillary hit a theme she intended to stress, namely, that she hoped to be the first woman president. “To be here in this beautiful park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt’s enduring vision of America, the nation we want to be,” she continued. “And in a place… with absolutely no ceilings.”5

The reference to “no ceilings” obviously associated the outdoor setting of the speech as an image referencing Hillary’s goal of “shattering the glass ceiling” that feminists in US politics have typically identified as sexist barriers that a male-dominated society sets up to limit the advancement of women in business and politics.

The Guardian in London summed up Clinton’s Roosevelt Island 45-minute speech as follows.

• Clinton is running to make US economy work for every American—from nurses to truck drivers to veterans and small business owners—and to end the top-down economic policies “that failed us before.”

• She wants to end income inequality, make the middle class mean something again, and to give the poor a chance to work their way into it.

• She promises to listen to scientists on climate change, to reign in banks that are “still too risky” and to give “law-abiding immigrant families a path to citizenship.”

• She proposes making preschool and quality childcare available to every child in America and providing paid sick days, paid family leave, equal pay and a higher minimum wage.

• She promises to keep Americans safe: “I’ve stood up to adversaries like Putin and reinforced allies like Israel. I was in the situation room on the day we got bin Laden. But, I know—I know we have to be smart as well as strong.”

• She is also calling for a constitutional amendment to undo the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. She also proposes universal, automatic registration and expanded early voting.

“That makes for quite the progressive checklist,” the Guardian commented in summary.6 “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I’ll be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States,” Clinton said in conclusion, with Bill Clinton joining her at the podium with a backdrop that the Washington Post observed as “a stunning East River view of the Manhattan skyline in the background, the United Nations building sparkling in bright sunshine behind the podium.”7

The problem with Hillary Clinton’s speech was that her platform identified nothing new or truly exciting. Hillary has been on the national political stage virtually continuously since 1996, fully two decades ago. Virtually every Democrat running for president since 1996 had pledged to end income inequality by taxing the rich to distribute income to the poor. But despite Democratic programs designed to end poverty that trace back to Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society proclaimed in 1964—more than 50 years ago—the Democratic Party’s social welfare state has not reduced income inequality or eliminated poverty some $20 trillion and eighty welfare programs later.8

As First Lady, as US Senator from New York, as US Secretary of State, what could Hillary point to as her major accomplishment? Under Bill Clinton’s administration, Hillary had failed to pass what was then known as “Hillary-Care,” the precursor to the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Her husband signed NAFTA—an issue both Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders would push against her. As US senator from New York, she had failed to sponsor any major legislation that improved public education in the United States, as the test scores of children in public schools continue to plummet.9 As Secretary of State, Hillary’s campaign would be plagued by the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, as well as the “Arab Spring” turning into terrorist chaos, spreading from Libya across North Africa into Syria. Add to this Hillary’s responsibility for the rise of ISIS on her watch.

The American public had seen Hillary’s 2008 campaign and rejected it for the “Hope and Change” charisma offered by Barack Hussein Obama. Why did Hillary think a replay of her 2008 presidential campaign would suddenly catch fire this second time around?

On Thursday, April 29, 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses typically with the Democrats, made one of the most low-key announcements in US history, declaring he was a candidate for President of the United States. On a sunny afternoon, Sanders, wearing a grey business suit, a blue shirt, and a simple patterned blue tie, walked calmly with a few pages rolled together in his right hand, stepping up to a simple podium set out on the grounds of the US Capitol building in Washington.

The announcement lasted approximately ten minutes, with the two-dozen or so reporters present taking up about half the time asking questions. Sanders started off by telling the reporters he did not have “an endless amount of time” because he had to get back inside to the Senate. “Let me just say this,” he began. “This country today, in my view, has more crises than at any time since the Depression of the 1930s.” This comment made it clear Sanders was going to focus much of his campaign on economics, with an emphasis on income inequality.

“For most Americans, their reality is that they are working longer hours for lower wages,” he continued. “In inflation-adjusted money they are earning less money than they used to years ago, despite a huge increase in technology and in productivity. So all over this country, I’ve been talking to people, and they say, ‘How does it happen that I’m producing more, but I’m working longer hours for less wages. My kid can’t afford to go to college and I’m having a hard time affording health care.” In wrapping up, Sanders asked, “How does it happen that the top one percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent?” Sanders answered the rhetorical question as follows: “My answer is that this type of economics is not only wrong, it is unsustainable.”

When reporters asked how Sanders intended to differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton, he responded that he voted against and strongly opposed the Iraq war that President George W. Bush launched against Saddam Hussein because he was confident the Iraq war would lead to massive destabilization in the region, that he was helping to lead the end to the Trans-Pacific Partnership because he viewed it as another in a series of horrendous free trade deals that have cost Americans millions of good-paying jobs, and he stressed his opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, saying he was opposed to transporting “some of the dirtiest fuels in the world.”

In rushing to get back to the Senate, Sanders took one final question from a reporter who wanted to know if it was more important to Sanders to get these ideas out than to contest Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination in 2016. “You’ve got to understand we are in this race to win,” Sanders answered. “But I ask people to understand my history. You are looking at a guy indisputably who has one of the most unusual political histories of anybody in the United States Congress. It’s not only that I’m the longest serving independent in the history of the US Congress. It’s that when I first ran for state office I get 1 percent of the vote. I don’t know if I should be proud of that, but my last election I got 71 percent of the vote.” Then Sanders hit the themes, rushed as he was to return to business in the Senate, that ignited the base of the Democratic party more than any Hillary Clinton speech or video was capable of doing, regardless of how professionally crafted or expensively produced.

“The point is that’s not the right question,” Sanders insisted. “The right question is that if you raise the issues that are on the hearts and minds of the American people—if you try to put together a movement which says we have got to stand together as a people and say that this Capitol, this beautiful Capitol, our country, belongs to all of us and not the billionaires. That’s not raising an issue. That’s winning elections. That’s where the American people are.” With that, Sanders turned, waved casually to the crowd acknowledging the sparse applause, as he hurried across the grass to get back to work inside.

At 73 years old when he made his presidential announcement, Sanders was born in Brooklyn in 1941, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. When he announced his presidential candidacy, the leftist press recognized immediately Sanders’ well-known history with far-left socialists was considered a liability in the general election. Sanders was associated with the Young People’s Socialist League or the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Sanders was a political activist protesting with the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Even today, Sanders identifies himself as a “democratic socialist” (with a small “d”), not a capitalist.10 Sanders began his political career getting elected in 1981 to the first of three terms as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, taking office as a self-described socialist (who rejected being described as a communist), who insisted on hanging on his office wall a portrait of railroad labor union organizer Eugene V. Debs, who was convicted and sent to prison during World War I under the Sedition Act of 1918 for giving an anti-war speech in Ohio.11 Debs, who ran for president five times as the candidate of the Socialist Party of America, ran for president for the last time from prison, in 1920, receiving 3.41 percent of the vote. Despite his history as an independent and a socialist, Sanders was adamant that he intended to compete with Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

The Washington Post, in reporting Sanders’ announcement, left no doubt about the editorial staff’s conclusion, “He’s not going to win.” The Washington Post article made clear that Sanders, little known outside most of the most liberal circles nationally had no intention of matching Hillary Clinton dollar for fundraising dollar. “Even if Sanders wanted to try to raise the sort of money that would make him competitive with Clinton, he couldn’t do it,” wrote Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post article. “Or come anywhere close.” The newspaper insisted Sanders was not concerned with winning. “He’s been around politics long enough—he’s been in state and federal politics almost continuously since 1981—to understand how big a frontrunner Clinton is and to grasp his own limitations as a candidate,” Cillizza noted. “What Sanders’ candidacy is really about is influencing the debate within the Democratic party in the quadrennial pinch point of a presidential election. Sanders wants to drag Clinton (and everyone else in the field) to the left on issues like trade (he opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership), campaign finance reform and income inequality.”12

But some nine months and three days later, the Washington Post had changed its tune. “To go from that decidedly low-key announcement to where Sanders is today on Iowa caucus day—in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton in the Hawkeye State and way in front of her in New Hampshire’s February 8 primary—is absolutely stunning,” Cillizza wrote in the Washington Post edition printed February 1, 2016. Somehow, Sanders had become a movement—a political phenomenon whose campaign was about to capture the excitement of Millennials and the imagination of the left-leaning base of the Democratic Party leap from nowhere to within steps of Clinton. Remarkably, Hillary—the party’s presumptive nominee in 2016, as she had also been in 2008—was on the verge of defeat a second time—this time challenged by an aging, obscure socialist, an independent from Vermont who caucused with the Democrats in Congress, without having to swear any particular allegiance to the Democratic Party. Desperate, Hillary gave into her most base and immoral instincts, entering into a secret pact with Podesta and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, to rig the Democratic Party primary process and make damn sure Sanders would lose, despite being the more popular and charismatic politician of the two.

On May 26, 2015, Sanders staged the in-person launch of his presidential campaign with an outdoor rally in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. The event took place on a warm, sunny day and drew an estimated crowd of 5,000 in what the Washington Post described as a “peak-Vermont event filled with free ice cream, zydeco music, and speeches from both Ben and Jerry of ice cream fame.”13 Senior politics editor Russel Berman, writing for The Atlantic, also commented on the atypical nature of the Sanders rally. “It was a rally but it was pitched more like a festival, complete with free ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s and a performance by ‘Mango Jam’—a Vermont-based, six-piece dance band that plays a combination of Zydeco, Cajun, and Caribbean music,” Berman wrote. “The lure of live music, Phish Food, and a beautiful setting on the banks of Lake Champlain drew a crowd that appeared to be in the thousands, but there was a larger point to this political theater.” Berman noted that Sanders, like other underdogs before him, wanted to demonstrate he could launch a credible campaign without relying upon the financial support of billionaire donors. “He didn’t bring in Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield only to serve their iconic ice cream—the two have long advocated on behalf of liberal causes, including campaign-finance reform (or as they call it, ‘Get the Dough out of Politics!’),” Berman wrote. “Sanders needs to motivate activists and small-dollar donors, and he’s hoping this kind of alternative kickoff can set the tone.”14

As he started speaking, the crowd—consisting mostly of white citizens of Vermont, with Millennials predominant in an audience peppered by senior citizens—began chanting “Bernie!” and “Feel the Bern”—chants that were to dominate every subsequent Sanders rally. “Let me be very clear,” Sanders said, echoing his initial announcement of candidacy delivered to the small press conference on the grounds of the US Capitol. “There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent and when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent.” Writing for the Washington Post, reporter Ben Terris commented that Sanders’ speech felt like Sanders had caught up with the times, as much as the times catching up with him.15

“He has been talking about income inequality, nationalized healthcare, and redistribution of wealth since he was the socialist mayor here in Burlington, in the 1980s,” Terris wrote. “He ran on these issues when he was the lone Vermont House seat in 1991, and gave an eight-hour speech opposing an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts as a Senator in 2010.” Terris continued to note that Sanders’ politics had always played well in Vermont, back to the time when he was mayor of Burlington and the city was referred to as the “People’s Republic of Burlington” and his supporters as “Sandernistas.” Terris commented that neither one of these terms were used derogatively in Vermont, the first state to legalize same-sex unions, the home of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and the only state in the country whose capital city does not have a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant.16

As Sanders ticked through his key issues, including health care for all and reversing climate change, as well as addressing wealth and income inequality, raising wages and creating jobs, as well as introducing campaign finance reform, he hit up what was quickly to become a signature item to his appeal: providing free college education for all. “And when we talk about education, let me be very clear. In a highly competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce we can create,” Sanders said. “It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades.” This set up a key pledge that Sanders was to repeat as often as possible. “That must end,” he said. “That is why, as president, I will fight to make tuition in public colleges and universities free, as well as substantially lower interest rates on student loans.”17

Millennials, those born between 1980 and 1995, have been characterized as an “entitlement generation,” raised on “participation awards” that has become a powerful political force. In addition to demanding free college tuition, Millennials are demanding not just jobs, but meaningful work. The concept includes a living wage, a French workweek, free job training, and socially useful labor.18 Reporter John Wagner, writing in the Washington post noted that Millennials found in Bernie Sanders a candidate to love. “They grew up in the recession, watched their parents struggle and became anxious about their futures,” Wagner wrote. “They are graduating from college with huge debts and gnawing uncertainty about landing jobs and affording homes. They have little faith in government and other institutions they thought they could depend upon.”19 While Sanders economic message clearly appealed to Millennials sense of entitlement, others felt Bernie’s appeal to the young rested in his authenticity. To Cenk Uygur, the host of the online news shows “The Young Turks,” Bernie’s appeal to Millennials rested in his authenticity. “You can’t fake a 40 year record,” Uygur wrote. “The older generation grew up on blow-dried anchors, plastic politicians, and a sense of pretense,” he wrote. “Bernie Sanders is a man not of his time, but of this time. He was authentic and uncombed before any YouTube star thought to make that concept cool.”20

Though the Democratic Party contest for the presidential nomination was always a choice between Clinton and Sanders, the only drama was whether or not Vice President Joe Biden and/or Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren would decide to declare themselves as presidential candidates. Much of the speculation on Biden derived from what was believed to be continuing animosity between Hillary and President Barack Obama that traced back to Obama defeating Hillary in her first presidential run in 2008. A central proponent of this theory was political author Ed Klein, whose bestselling 2014 book “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. The Obamas” had argued that the tension between the two families was filled with contempt. On October 19, 2015, Breitbart.com reported that President Obama was refusing to meet with Hillary, while Obama and his allies urged Vice President Biden to challenge her for the Democratic nomination. Klein had reported that first Obama had approached Elizabeth Warren, who declined, followed by former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley who Obama came to realize “doesn’t have the stuff.”21

Appearing on NBC’s “Today Show” on April 9, 2015, Warren was asked three times and ruled out each time a decision to run for president, despite arguments that a progressive movement was being formed to draft her into the race. “I’m not running and I’m not going to run,” she said. “I’m in Washington. I’ve got this really great job and a chance to make a difference on things that really matter.” Host Savannah Guthrie then asked Warren if she was “unequivocally and categorically” ruling out a run. Again, Warren affirmed, “I’m not running.” Finally, Guthrie asked—saying it was at the possibility of “beating a dead horse here”—“Did you ever even consider, entertain the possibility of running for president?” Warren’s answer was a flat, definitive, “No.” In reporting this exchange, MSNBC noted the liberal groups MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, along with the super PAC “Ready for Warren,” had been hoping to convince Warren she could beat Hillary for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.22

It took Biden longer to decide. On October 21, 2015, in an announcement made in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by President Obama on his right and his wife Jill Biden on his left, Biden told the nation he was not to be a candidate for president in 2016. “Unfortunately, I believe we’re out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination,” Biden explained. Still, many including the Wall Street Journal noted the loss of his son Beau Biden, continued to weigh heavily on Biden.23 Beau Biden, the elder son of the vice president and the former attorney general of Delaware died on June 30, 2015, at the age of 46, after a long battle with brain cancer. “The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words,” the vice president said in a written statement. “We know that Beau’s spirit will live on in all of us—especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children, Natalie and Hunter.”24

Even as Hillary proceeded as the “inevitable” Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, various Democrats expressed their concern she carried into the race a number of liabilities.25 The scandals that had plagued the Clintons ever since Bill was elected governor of Arkansas had continued, through Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State. What worried Democrats was the continuing controversy over Hillary’s actions and explanations during and following the Benghazi terror attack, the possibility of a Department of Justice criminal indictment after a serious FBI criminal investigation into her use of a private email system while she was Secretary of State, plus various developing allegations that the Clinton Foundation was a “vast criminal conspiracy,” and health issues that had dogged Hillary since she suffered a concussion from a fall in 2012. Hillary had lost to Obama in 2008. Did she have what it would take to beat the GOP in 2016? This prompted concerned Democrats to look for alternatives.

What few remember was that Hillary did have three contenders in addition to Sen. Bernie Sanders when the Democratic primary debates began in October 2015. On the stage with Hillary and Bernie in the first debate were former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who did decide to declare his candidacy after all, along with former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee. Webb and Chafee suspended their campaigns just before the Iowa caucuses, held on February 1, 2015, and O’Malley suspended right after. Also in the race for a short time was Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, a political activist whose zeal for campaign finance reform and electoral reform had led him to push for a Second Constitutional Convention. Lessig managed to raise $1 million in an exploratory committee, but he withdrew from the presidential race on November 2, 2015, after failing to qualify for participation on stage with the others in the Democrat’s primary debates.26

Speaking to the Democratic Party’s summer meeting in Minneapolis on August 28, 2015, Clinton addressed what CNN described as a “markedly pro-Clinton audience.” In a conversation with reporters after her upbeat speech, Clinton assured doubters that she had learned her lessons in 2008. “As some of you might recall, in 2008, I got a lot of votes but I didn’t get enough delegates,” Clinton explained. “And so I think it is understandable that my focus is going to be on delegates, as well as votes, this time.” Clinton then added, “We are working really hard to lock in as many supporters as possible. Of course that would include super delegates…. I am heartened by the positive response I am getting.”27