THE BIDEN SWITCHEROO

Democrat Party leaders who couldn’t care less that Hillary Clinton is a liar and a crook who has gravely endangered national security will drop her in a New York minute if they think she’ll lose the election.

If the FBI recommends Hillary be indicted, party leaders plan to ease her out and replace her with Vice President Joe Biden, a billionaire friend who is wired into their thinking told Jack Wheeler, he reported in the HFR last week.

Why, you ask, wouldn’t Democrats turn to the guy who ran against Hillary in the primaries, got millions of votes, crushes Donald Trump in opinion polls?

Because the Democrat party is run chiefly by and for the benefit of crony capitalists such as the Wall Street moguls who paid Hillary $225,000 a pop for boilerplate speeches.

A genuine Socialist like Bernie Sanders is as grave a threat to their power, privileges and ill-gotten gains as a conservative Republican would be, and is an economic loon to boot.  There is no way party bosses would ever permit him to be the Democrat nominee, no matter what it took stop him.

Millions of Americans would greet the Biden Switcheroo with sighs of relief.  Slow Joe would be a terrible president.  But he doesn’t lie nearly as often as do Hillary and Trump; isn’t being sued for fraud or investigated by the FBI; hasn’t committed or enabled sexual assault, and nobody has questioned his sanity.

In the scenario Jack Wheeler’s Forbes List friend sketched, President Obama would orchestrate Hillary’s removal from behind the scenes.  After the FBI recommends indictment, friendly journalists will be primed to demand she quit the race.  (Some) prominent Democrats would pile on.

But what if that’s not enough to get Hillary to go quietly into that dark night?  The Clintons have weathered earlier scandals by lying like rugs, stonewalling, hunkering down until the news media move on to something else.  That may not work this time, but Hillary may think it will.

I doubt Hillary can be forced out by just an FBI recommendation she be indicted. Hillary will say it’s same old same old.  Her core supporters – who are as oblivious to reality as Trumpkins are – – would believe her.  An astounding 71 percent of Democrats in a Rasmussen poll May 31 said Hillary should run even if she’s indicted.

I suspect many of them would change their minds if Hillary actually were indicted.  But that would require a direct confrontation between President Obama and Hillary, because no matter how much evidence the FBI presents, the Justice Department won’t indict her unless he gives the order.  I wonder if he has the stones to do it.

The president holds the high cards.  He could tell Hillary that if she doesn’t drop out, he’ll have her indicted.  But if she goes quietly, he’ll pardon her for the crimes the FBI says she committed.

If Hillary is acting rationally, she’ll take the deal.  But if she were acting rationally, shortly after the email scandal broke she’d have left the race for health reasons, or to spend more time with the family, and spent the rest of her life enjoying her ill-gotten gains.  But her greed and lust for power wouldn’t permit her to abandon her quest for the presidency.

Hillary’s greed and lust for power are undiminished. And Obama may not hold all the high cards.  Could Hillary, from her time as secretary of state, have something on the president?

About the administration’s curious refusal to send assistance to our consulate in Benghazi when it was under attack, perhaps?  Or about illegal arms transfers to Islamists in Syria?  Or doctored intelligence reports about the ISIS threat?  We could see the political equivalent of nuclear war.

Hillary’s obstinacy – and Obama’s distaste for direct confrontation — isn’t the only obstacle to the Biden Switcheroo.  If Democrat leaders are determined to screw him, there’s nothing Bernie Sanders can do to prevent it.  But Bernie has some arrows in his quiver.

He and his followers can raise hell at the Democrat National Convention.  With good reason.  What greater evidence could there be of the Establishment’s disregard for the will of the rank and file than handing the nomination to a guy who didn’t run in the primaries?

Then, filled with righteous indignation, Bernie Sanders could accept the Green Party nomination and run in the fall, which would complicate life for Democrats.

Time is short.  If the Biden Switcheroo is to be made at all, it has to be made soon.  The next few weeks could be very, very exciting.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.