With the 2014 midterms having come and gone, and President Barrack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address delivered, we are officially in the final two years of the current administration. For political junkies like me, that means one thing: the 2016 race for the White House is underway.
The Republican field is sure to be loaded with big names. Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin have all expressed interest, and many more have been speculated as potential candidates. Even if only half of those expected to run decide to throw their hat into the ring, the field will be crowded with diverse and potent candidates.
Courtesy of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Creative Commons)
Analysis could last for hours trying to determine who will actually run, what their chances are of winning the nomination and/or the general election, what factions within the party could form, etc.
What I want to focus on instead is the one and only factor that will entirely determine the Democratic nomination: Hillary Clinton.
Conventional wisdom is that she will run for president for the second time after coming up just short to President Obama in 2008, and she will easily become the nominee over a Democratic field that leaves something to be desired.
No matter how likely or unlikely they are, there are three possible scenarios for Clinton before reaching the general election. First, she decides not to run for president. Second, she decides to run and loses the nomination. Third, she decides to run and wins the nomination.
First, the almost unthinkable, would be a scenario in which Hillary Clinton decides not to run. This would be beyond surprising given the fact she has been speculated as a presidential candidate for more than a decade.
In fact, almost every aspect of her political career — from trying to reform health care as first lady to becoming a United States senator from New York in 2000 to being appointed as secretary of state — has all been viewed in the context of a hypothetical future run for the White House.
While it would be a long shot, I wouldn’t entirely rule out the possibility of her sitting out. If Clinton were elected president of the United States in 2016, she would be 69 years old at the time of her swearing in. This would give her something in common with Ronald Reagan — of course not ideologically — as they would be tied for the oldest president to assume office.
This is not only important because it would be nearly unprecedented to elect someone that old, but maybe Clinton is finally tired of a career in the political limelight. Running for president is not easy. It takes an immense amount of work and preparation. It seems impossible to imagine how stressful it is.
After arguably the longest and most drawn out primary battle in the history of American presidential politics with Obama in 2008, will Clinton want to start the whole thing all over again in 2016? In addition to her age potentially alienating her from a usual Democratic stronghold, young voters, she is sure to face a formidable Republican opponent in the general election.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (Photo by Magnus Manske/ Creative Commons)
The question for her may not be whether or not she can win the Democratic nomination, as that is almost a given. The questions are: Does she want to go through the whole process again, and is she optimistic she can win the general election in 2016?
Since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, only once has a political party won three straight Presidential elections: Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 followed by George H.W. Bush in 1988. This historical precedent is working against Clinton as well. American politics is cyclical. After eight years of one party, the electorate usually switches to the other party.
That being said, Clinton has been preparing for another presidential candidacy for awhile. She has the establishment support from her party, will have huge monetary advantages over her opponents, and has an impressive resume.
A decision not to run would be an undoing of the entire infrastructure that has been put in place during the extent of her political career. All things considered, I give Clinton a 95 percent chance to run and a 5 percent chance to sit out.
This leads us to scenario number two: She runs and loses the nomination to another candidate.
This scenario is almost equally unlikely given the expected field for the Democratic nomination. The most credible speculated candidates are Vice President Joe Biden, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and Massachusetts freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren would be the challengers with the best odds to topple Clinton; they’re still not good odds, though.
Vice President Biden ran for the Democratic nomination in 2008 with Clinton and was largely an afterthought, never assuming the status of a viable frontrunner. While some would like his experience as a United States senator from Delaware and as vice president, he is even older than Clinton at age 72. Biden is known for verbal gaffes on the campaign trail and would not wind up posing a real threat to Clinton for the nomination.
Elizabeth Warren has only been in the U.S. Senate for two years, which encompasses her entire political career. Some on the left are fervent supporters of her, and she is likely to be a presidential candidate somewhere down the road if not in 2016. Again, what little support she has would not be enough to beat Clinton in all likelihood.
Crazier things have happened, though. Even in 2008, Obama was just a freshman senator, and he wound up winning the nomination as an underdog. If Clinton performs poorly in debates while one of her opponents performs very well and articulates good policy ideas for the country and raises money, the opponent could just turn into a viable alternative to Clinton.
It is impossible to predict something detrimental such as Rick Perry’s “oops” moment in a debate for the Republican nomination last primary cycle. If Clinton finds similar misfortune or some scandal comes out, it could be her undoing.
Another thing to consider is how high the bar is set for Clinton. It is so widely assumed she will go through the primaries unscathed and she will have no legitimate opposition that the moment one of her opponents begins to gain some momentum, the media and voters could be quick to overreact.
It will be nearly impossible for Clinton to meet the expectations that have been imposed on her for the nomination process. A little momentum for one of her opponents could galvanize the entire portion of the left who don’t want Clinton to be the nominee, thus producing a legitimate alternative to her.
We saw this in 2012 with Mitt Romney in the GOP primaries. He was unpopular among many in the party, but his opposition didn’t have a viable candidate to support. Finally, the opposers settled on Rick Santorum, who didn’t have a shred of the name recognition or fundraising abilities Romney had. Even still, Santorum put up a good fight and made the primary closer in the early stages than many would have guessed.
If this same trend occurs with the Democrats in 2016, once a candidate other than Clinton gains some momentum then the individual could begin to pose a real threat if the momentum can turn into winning primaries and raising funds.
Again, this scenario is another long shot. If Clinton runs for the Democratic nomination, she probably has around a 20 percent chance of losing, and if she loses, it will probably be due to her own failures rather than the successes of another candidate. Combine this figure with the 95 percent chance she runs in the first place, her overall odds of deciding to run for the nomination and losing are 19 percent.
This leaves the final, most likely scenario for Clinton in the upcoming 2016 primary process: She runs for the nomination and wins, which I arbitrarily put at 76 percent.
While it’s no sure thing, people would be foolish to bet against her for a plethora of reasons. Though polls are almost meaningless this early on in the process, no one has polled anywhere near her so far, and there’s no indication anyone will any time soon. To classify her as a “frontrunner” would be an understatement.
She has been through this before. While it’s a tiring and stressful process that requires a lot of work, it’s also a valuable experience. Any candidate who has already been through the motions of a presidential run has an advantage over a candidate who is learning on the fly.
Almost nobody, if anybody, in the Democratic Party establishment wants to see her lose. There is something to be said for being the unanimous choice among the elite in your own party. She is the only one who the party believes can win the general election in 2016.
(Photo: Steven Depolo/Creative Commons)
While her expectations are impossibly high, Clinton would have to drastically underwhelm to lose the nomination. There will surely be an overreaction if she loses a debate or makes a gaffe, but it would take quite a bit for such a thing to cost her the nomination.
Lastly, the field could wind up being even weaker than we think right now. Joe Biden will probably run because it is likely his last chance before he is really too old for a run to even be plausible. Younger speculated candidates — such as Warren, Cuomo or O’Malley — might think it wiser to wait for their turn in 2020 or 2024, when they have a better chance due to the lack of a presence such as Clinton’s.
All things considered, there is a 5 percent chance Clinton won’t run, a 19 percent chance she will run and lose, and a 76 percent chance she will run and become the Democratic nominee.
Clinton is probably the first speculated candidate ever to have roughly three-fourths odds to become a major party’s nominee in an open election. However, I will adjust the words of statistical expert Nate Silver and say this: “It’s funny how things that have a 76 percent chance of happening don’t happen 100 percent of the time.”
About Kyle Jacobson
