Joe Biden's Perfect Role: Vice Candidate

He's been vice president for six years, so why not one more as a sort of vice candidate? That's what Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker thinks Joe Biden is positioning himself to be, wisely. The VP can't beat Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head to race, and he surely knows it, writes Lizza. To do so, for example, he'd need to trump her among groups such as minorities, women, and younger voters—a near impossible task for someone "who is white and male and older than Clinton." That a sitting VP can't gain his party's nomination must be humiliating, but that humiliation would only be worse if he runs and gets clobbered.

"It's much more likely that the Vice-President is not actually preparing a campaign against Clinton, but rather readying himself as a replacement if something wildly unexpected destroys her candidacy," writes Lizza. "In that sense, Biden is being shrewd." Knowing he can't defeat Clinton, he is setting himself up as the Democrats' "insurance policy in case of her collapse." Click for his full post. (More Joe Biden stories.)