A hunch is an idea somewhere between an educated guess and a certainty. There are plenty of hunches about politics, mostly about the future. Here are a few:
Hunch No. 1: Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts senator and failed presidential candidate has made it difficult for Joe Biden to pick a running mate. She’s still in the running to be his vice president, but hardly a favorite. She’s 71, and the job usually goes to someone younger. And Biden is under pressure to choose a black woman in an election year in which racism is a top issue. Warren is white.
Though Biden and Warren have rarely been allies, they’ve been conferring since he locked up the nomination. Biden is a party man. He fears being too far from the Democratic Left. But as the party lurched to the left, he hadn’t kept up. Obviously, Biden needed ideological advice. And who better to give it than Warren. Biden “has so far publicly adopted at least six policy stances shaped by Warren and her team,” writes Alexi McCammond of Axios, everything from increased Social Security checks to climate change. Warren has transformed Biden into a progressive.
But how has that complicated the vice presidential selection process? Biden has been impressed by Warren, her command of policy matters, and her political toughness. Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick insists she’s “more practical” than she seems. “She fights for the outcome, but because she’s so smart and she’s so creative, she can think of more than one way to get there.” As a result, other finalists on the Biden Veep list have faded in comparison.
California Sen. Kamala Harris was once the front-runner. Now, Josh Kraushaar of National Journal writes, she “resembles a top minor league hitting prospect who just hasn’t shown she can hit major-league pitching.” And conservative journalists are ready to shred the reputations of Obama aide Susan Rice and congresswoman Karen Bass, a Fidel Castro admirer.
Who does that leave? Perhaps only Warren.
Hunch No. 2: Biden will back out of the three scheduled presidential debates with President Trump. Even if his current lead in the race has dwindled, he has nothing to gain and much to lose in a nationally televised verbal fight with Trump. Having decided against giving an acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Milwaukee in front of a friendly audience, why would he go through the ordeal of debating the president? It would not be a genteel event.
Biden’s strategy of keeping public appearances to a minimum has been a success. What would be worse for Biden now — brutal debates with Trump or weeks of being criticized by Trump for not debating? The answer is obvious.
Hunch No. 3: Voting by mail. The Washington Post referred last week to Trump’s attacks on mail balloting as “unfounded.” Not quite. In New York, it took six weeks of validating and counting mail votes to declare winners of two congressional races. In Michigan, ballots didn’t reach voters until after the state’s primary election.
Even with Election Day three months away, mail voting is likely to be a fiasco with state and local officials and the U.S. Postal Service in charge. Nevada, a swing state, is a likely example. The Democrat-run government is sending ballots to every voter, whether or not they asked for one. Multiple ballots can be stuffed in a single envelope with only a signature required on the outside and none on the ballots inside. You can imagine how long counting ballots will take: weeks, not days.
Hunch No. 4: Attorney General Bill Barr says the findings of the investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham into whether Obama administration officials illegally tried to thwart Trump’s election will be revealed before the election.
There’s plenty of evidence in the public domain that such an effort took place. Legacy media have declined to look into the matter, as if they know through clairvoyance that nothing happened. Nonetheless, the Post says Democrats are worried “that Barr and Durham could upend the presidential race with a late revelation.”
Democrats should be nervous. But unless Trump has cut Biden’s lead substantially, a “late revelation” would not be enough to change the outcome of the election. Democrats and the media would attack any indictments as the result of a Republican conspiracy.
