Can Biden Defeat Her?

According to The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform, that establishment support could be decisive. Written by Marty Cohen, David Carol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller, The Party Decides is an impressive scholarly study that has broken out of political science circles to influence a broad range of pundits, politicos, and intellectuals. The authors argue that, even in the era of open nominations—when voters in primaries and caucuses seemingly select their party’s nominee—party elites still determine who wins the nomination. They typically come together around a single candidate and swing the nomination to him against an array of insurgents. 

While The Party Decides is a great book, it suffers from the same limitation as almost all scholarship on political parties: a dearth of data. The parties are public-private institutions that do not have to disclose most of their internal doings. So political scientists struggle to confirm hypotheses about the parties. This is one reason The Party Decides relies heavily on politicians’ endorsements of candidates to test its theory. While they have little direct influence on voters, endorsements can indicate whether the party elites are coalescing around a candidate, bringing with them their donor networks, strategists, and public credibility. Unfortunately, more direct evidence of such coordination is impossible to acquire because these party decisions are secret.

Even so, the theory is more or less sound. The consensus choice of the political class is virtually guaranteed to win the nomination. While insurgents may make the early contests interesting, they typically cannot overcome the party itself. Sooner or later, the establishment candidate wins. This is great news for Clinton.

For at least three related reasons, however, the theory may not apply in 2016. 

The first is that not all insurgents are created equal: Joe Biden is no Dennis Kucinich. He is the sitting vice president of the United States, which implies access to fundraising networks, campaign talent, and other resources that outsider candidates simply lack. It also lends him a gravitas that hardly anybody else in the party possesses. This is important because the control of the nomination by the party elite is mediated by the party base. Strictly speaking, the voters do indeed determine the nominees under the current system, and the party cannot dictate terms to them. Instead, the elites coordinate their substantial resources to boost their preferred candidate, thus making victory prohibitively difficult for outsiders. Because of his position in the party, Biden should be able to raise enough cash on his own to compete at least in the early states, despite the preponderance of elites going for Clinton. He also has the name recognition and credibility to prompt a close look from Democratic voters.

Historically speaking, vice presidents who run for the White House rarely lose the nomination. In the postwar era, seven sitting or former vice presidents have run for the nomination: Alben Barkley, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, and Al Gore. Only Barkley and Quayle failed to secure it. The reason is simple: The office of vice president has a lot of heft. It probably is not enough to overcome the establishment support Clinton enjoys, but the prospect cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Second, the party establishment’s control over the nomination is not a political suicide pact. Granted, Clinton has done a fantastic job of corralling party support early on, but she won’t necessarily hold it over time. The party elites want above all to win, which means Clinton must eventually stop her slide in the general election polls. She already appears to have lost her lead against some of her Republican opponents, and she must remain in striking distance of them. If she cannot do that, look for the party establishment to reevaluate its support, especially if Biden is running stronger in head-to-head matchups against the GOP. It is here that heavy reliance on endorsement data might paint a false picture: The party establishment might start to break away from Clinton behind the scenes before anyone publicly revoked a single endorsement.

Third, there is one person whose support matters substantially more than anybody else’s: Barack Obama. If Obama decides that Clinton cannot win, or if he thinks Biden can win and would be a better steward of his legacy, that could be hugely consequential. Obama is the only politician in the Democratic party with a network of donors and strategists bigger than Clinton’s. He also has enormous sway over Democratic voters, especially African Americans. If he mobilized his campaign apparatus on behalf of Biden, that could make all the difference. And if he were to endorse Biden, even by a wink and a nod, that would be a game-changer. 

Indeed, the power of a sitting president must not be underestimated, especially one like Obama who retains sky-high approval and favorable ratings from his party’s base. It might not be an overstatement to say that in 2016, it will be less the party than the president who decides. If Obama remains on the sidelines, that will be a boon for Clinton. If he mobilizes his campaign network against her, that will mean big trouble. If he appeals to voters on Biden’s behalf, that will be disastrous. 

At present, the least we can say is that—all else being equal—Clinton is the heavy favorite to win the nomination, even against Biden. The catch is that, this time around, all else might not be equal.

Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.