This is shaping up to be the most interesting election season in quite some time.
The Democrats like to charge the Republicans with being the party of “old white men.”
So who are the three top candidates, assuming Joe Biden goes for it?
Two old white men and an old white woman.
And after years of accusing the right of name-calling over the epithet “socialist,” they’ve got one bona fide card-carrying socialist in the running.
But of course if Elizabeth Warren enters the race they’ll have a fake Indian.
On the Republican side they’ve got a black guy, two Hispanics, a woman, and a reality-show star who’s spent more of his life as a Democrat than a Republican.
A favorite insult on the left is to characterize the right as dumb.
So on the right they have Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon, and Ted Cruz, who Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz called one of the school’s smartest students. The other one being Warren.
Carson may be the smartest guy who’s run for president since… maybe Thomas Jefferson. There are mediocre family practitioners, even mediocre internists. There are no mediocre brain surgeons.
And to pile irony on top of irony, the far-right has raised questions of Obama’s place of birth and citizenship status for the past seven years. But there’s no hiding the fact Cruz was born in Canada and held dual citizenship until recently.
When Obama ran for president the first time it was noted how little actual experience he’d had as a state legislator and senator, and that he’d actually won a contested race only once.
Now we have Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson who’ve never held elective office and of the three only Fiorina has actually run in a race, unsuccessfully one might add.
Ted Cruz has a fair amount of experience in office now, but Marco Rubio’s resume is rather thin when examined closely.
If Hillary gets the nomination she’ll be in much the same position Richard Nixon was in his second presidential race. With several felony charges hanging over her head and possible indictments in the future.
Plus, it’s becoming more and more evident that Obama doesn’t want her to succeed him. The Clintons and the Obamas loathe each other on a deeply personal level.
So maybe Biden, except Biden is deeply wounded by the death of his eldest son and couldn’t be expected to be in top form.
And Biden’s top form may be good enough for senate races, but on the stump he could be a disaster. He’s extremely affable but extremely gaffe-prone as well. When he’s in a rhetorical pickle he just makes stuff up on the fly.
Sanders seems like a nice enough guy, but face it, he’s a socialist and I don’t think the time has come yet when that’ll fly in America.
Trump is making a lot of noise and getting applause for saying things a lot of people are thinking but don’t dare say. He also has a short fuse. If Megyn Kelly rattled him how is he going to handle the heat in a debate?
Carson seems like a nice guy, perhaps a little too nice to lead this country in a dangerous world full of people who don’t like us much. He’s brilliant, but politics isn’t brain surgery.
Fiorina is smart and successful, but again has zero experience in office.
Rubio is as some conservatives point out, the right-wing Barack Obama. Ethnic-American with no accomplishments that warrant leaping into the presidency at this stage of his career.
Cruz is brilliant and prepared. He would run rings around anyone in debate.
Rumor has it the downside is Cruz likes people to know how brilliant he is, and that grates.
So how is this going to play out?
Durned if I know. But it’s going to get interesting.