2016 Postmortem

It's easy to have revisionist nostalgia, but folks need to remember that Biden has not alway been a darling of the left. He's a conservative Democrat who has a lot of baggage, including the Iraq vote.

For example, he is almost single-handedly responsible for Clarence Thomas being on the Supreme Court. He was chair of the Judiciary Committee and completely caved - refused at first to let Anita Hill testify, then allowed the Republicans to drag her through the mud and, after all that, allowed Thomas nomination to be voted out of his Committee and go to the floor where he knew Thomas had enough votes for confirmation. Civil rights and women's groups have never forgotten or fully forgiven him for that but held their fire when he became Obama's running mate. I doubt they would have continued to hold their tongues if he put himself out there to run for president.

Biden only became our sweet Crazy Joe as Obama's vice president. But let's not forget the call on the left to remove Biden from the 2012 ticket and replace him with Hillary, whom folks insisted was much more qualified and electable than Biden. At the time, Hillary was as popular as Biden is now. Only when she began to run for President did they bring out the long knives. And they would have done the same thing to Biden.

As I said, revisionism is easy. Reality is hard.