Actually, Boneyard Dem, all our good, experienced Democrats have the general package you're looking for. Let's face it, no one quite as outstanding in ideology, experience and preparation as Hillary, 2016's 800-pound gorilla, is out there. But we can run any of a number of good men, and perhaps a lot of the hate and misogyny unleashed on her will have OD'd the weaker Dems who were influenced, paving the way for another woman.
Obama thinks well of Biden, suggesting he's developed beyond his squishy, too trusting 1990s days. He has those warm Uncle Joe fuzzies that a traumatized nation might welcome. He'd hit 80 in his first term, though, and although I wouldn't run him out definitively for age alone, he is specifically undesirably old. At some point, though, we will have our first president in his 80s.
Kamala Harris: The package but not male. She is very strong, a former state prosecutor and AG with strong progressive and social liberal creds. I like her.
Sherrod Brown: The package. It's going to sound frivolous, but voters are frivolous: His voice is weak. Martin O'Malley came off weak on a stage; it killed a good candidacy.
Martin O'Malley: The package. Has he learned to own a stage yet?
Corey Booker: The package mostly, but as a senator in an almost dead-in-water Democratic caucus, he's had no chance to produce and make a name for himself. He has been intensively attacked by the right, lots of lying propaganda out there, so they're worried he'll run.
Joe Kennedy III: Far less of a resume than Booker, but, hey, he was born on home plate with a name, romantics swoon over him, and he'd presumably be able to gather power blocs behind him. That swooning caught my attention. Everything else is worthless in someone who's not elected.
Elizabeth Warren: I just don't think she'll run.
I'm waiting for candidates to present. I know the list of choices will be missing most of these and include others. There's a lot of quiet anger in the party over 2016, and I don't expect that anyone who is not proud to be a Democrat, of our heritage and values, will be allowed to run as a Democrat. Would that experiment, even with broken commitments, not been a disaster for the party without the Russians, justifying it in spite of everything? Probably; it traded a 2016 possible third party Nader-type disaster for internal dissension, but feelings are bitter.
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