In the 2012 presidential election, the Republican candidate will likely face the long-rumored, Obama-Hillary super ticket, predicts longtime political guru and Bill Clinton administration veteran Robert Reich.
“Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places,” Reich wrote in Business Insider on Wednesday. “Biden becomes secretary of state — a position he’s apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, vice president. ”
Insisting that his prediction is not based on any “inside information,” Reich wrote that such a move would be “because [President Barack] Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that.”
And with the economy in such bad shape, he continued, “Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined.”
With Clinton then perfectly lined up to be the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, he added, Democrats have a shot at the presidency for twelve years, giving progressives the ability to drastically reshape the Supreme Court. Democrats have not held the White House for more than eight years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry Truman.
“Obama-Clinton in 2012,” Reich concluded. “It’s a natural.”
Reich served in the Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton presidential administrations. He was Clinton’s secretary of labor from 1993 through 1997, served on Obama’s presidential economic transition advisory board, is a contributing editor at numerous publications and has taught economics and policy at Harvard, Berkeley and Brandeis.