Damn Right Hil's Gonna Run

"No, out of the question. First of all, I expect Biden to run. He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that."

For anybody who speaks Clintonese, that's close to a declaration of candidacy! Had she said, "No. no way" and shut up it would be different. But by tying her denial to Biden running again, knowing full well that he won't, she is basically declaring her candidacy if and when Biden drops out.

Hillary for President III?

Here's how it could unfold:

Step One: Biden's frailty and senility become hard to ignore and speculation that he's too old and too out of it to be president multiplies.

Step Two: The Democrats get massacred in the '22 election losing both houses, losing the Senate by 55-45, and losing key governors' races in New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Step Three: Shell shocked by the results, the party elders –including Pelosi and Schumer — go to the White House and give Biden the bad news: "You must withdraw from the 2024 contest. We will let you stay in office," they say, "We won't invoke the 25th amendment, but you have to say now that you're not running in '24. We can't go through another two years with you as the ostensible leader of the party."

Step Four: It becomes clear that Harris is too weak politically to be the consensus nominee and her poor polling shows it. With Harris polling in the low 20s and unable to unite the party, she follows Biden and announces that she won't run in '24.

Step Five: Unleashed, the left wing of the Democratic Party demands that its candidate head the ticket. But Sanders is too old and Warren too unpopular, so into the vacuum steps AOC.

Step Six: The establishment candidates, Pete Buttigieg for the whites and Cory Booker for the blacks, are unable to maintain large enough vote shares to counter the rising influence of the left. Fearful of massive defeat, the Democrats implore Hillary to enter the race since he is the only one who polls well and can save the party from the extreme left as she did in 2016.

Step Seven: A primary ensues and rapidly comes down to AOC versus Hillary. AOC wins most of the primaries and Hillary corals the super delegates. After a bitter floor fight at the convention, the party changes its rules and frees the superdelegates to vote as they wish, unbound by how their state voted in the primary. With super delegates free, Hillary wins the nomination.

Step Eight: it is one of the most one-sided elections in history and Donald Trump becomes the 47th President of the United States.

Hillary joins the ranks of Henry Clay, William Jennings Bryan, Al Smith, Thomas E. Dewey, Adlai Stevenson, and Hubert Humphrey as three-time losers.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.