President Ronald Reagan (R-CA) / Vice President George Bush (R-TX) ✓
Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) / Senator Gary Hart (D-CO)
It's difficult to see an opening for Biden in the primaries to begin with- Mondale had New Dealer labor, Hart had the younger, tech-friendly, business-friendly Atari Democrats- but I'm guessing Biden runs like a better version of Hart with just enough Rust Belt/developing Farm Crisis appeal to pull off an upset. He and Hart win over Kennedyland, but given the quality of Biden's campaigning, I don't think he could sell himself as a populist insurgent and really make inroads in the Midwest. It was too early for the Republican Lite strategy, so that door is closed too. All a Biden (or Hart) primary upset really achieves is making the Democrats' disarray look worse, because neither had a substantiative alternative to Mondale's New Dealerism or Reagan's neoliberalism, just platitudes about newness and youth ("where's the beef?").
