Former vice president Joe Biden is the unquestioned leader out of the gate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential race.
You know what that means. Donald Trump is going to get a second term.
Former Democratic vice presidents don’t fare all that well when they run at the top of the ticket, you see.
Most recently, we saw Al Gore in 2000, running away from Bill Clinton, who despite having been impeached in 1998, was still quite popular with voters, losing, at least according to the Supreme Court, to George W. Bush.
Walter Mondale was the standard-bearer in 1984, four years after losing, as the #2, with Jimmy Carter, to Ronald Reagan.
Mondale got waxed.
Hubert H. Humphrey was the sitting vice president in 1968, and he lost to Richard Nixon.
Start doing the math here, folks. The last three Dem veeps lost to Nixon, Reagan and Dubya.
How much further along are we as a nation if those guys aren’t in the Oval Office for 22 of the last 51 years?
(Put Trump’s time in there, and half of the last half-century has been run by a crook, a B-movie actor, a failed baseball-team owner, and a failed casino owner, football-team owner and reality-TV star. Some beacon light for the world we are.)
Two Democratic vice presidents have ascended to become the POTUS – Martin Van Buren and Andrew Johnson.
Neither are on anybody’s list of all-time greats. Johnson is the other president to face impeachment proceedings; Van Buren inspired the famed Van Buren Boys teen gang in 1990s-era New York.*
Not really.
Ahem.
Sorry, Joe, but, you gotta go.
Column by Chris Graham
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