If after the 2012 election you are told:

[Pres Mike]

It’s Jan 21, 2013. Obama and Biden are both sworn in for a second term.

You are told Joe Biden is elected president in 2020. It’s his first term. He has never been president before.

What do you believe happened 2013-2020?

I would assume Hillary Clinton is elected in 2016 and runs for re-election. In summer 2020 he health declined dramatically and announced she isn’t running for re-election. It’s too late for primaries so the democrats have a contested convention in August.

Hillary VP isn’t popular enough to win the nomination outright and the party refuses to nominate Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. I expect dozens of other democrats to throw their hat in the ring. Biden is nominated as a compromise candidate.

[Pres Mike]

Rand Paul wins in 2016 but libertarian policies dont work out in reality the same way they are in practice and that results in Biden defeating him

How would you explain Biden not running in 2016 but running in 2020?

[Pres Mike]

Rand Paul wins in 2016 but libertarian policies dont work out in reality the same way they are in practice and that results in Biden defeating him

How would you explain Biden not running in 2016 but running in 2020?

Hillary beats Biden in the primaries is my thought

That’s the most likely scenario

Or Biden is somehow a last minute compromise candidate

[Pres Mike]

Hillary losing the general election in 2016 would be most likely.  Then Biden, after either losing to Hillary in the primaries—or sitting out because he knows she’s heavily favored—decides to take one more shot at the top job.  The Republican president 2017-2021 doesn’t seem relevant.  I would have basically come of with the rl scenario.

In your mind
1. Wouldn’t Biden reputation be ruined? A sitting vice president losing the primary, how did he bounce back in 2020? Unless he had better general election polling than Hillary and lost a close primary. Which he spends four years saying “I should have been the nominee”. Which I guess is what happened?

2. If Biden did not run in 2016, why did he run in 2020 in your scenario?

[Pres Mike]

I would have been stunned. Did Hillary choose not to run for some reason? Was it a divorce with Bill? Biden must have very narrowly lost 2016 to someone like Jeb Bush. Bush v. Biden turns out to be even more controversial than Bush v. Gore and Biden won the popular vote by 2M votes yet lost the deciding state let's say, VA by 115 votes?

Liberals finally get their revenge for 2000 (and 2016) and deliver Biden the win in 2020 with a fairly comfortable victory after Jeb Bush has an unpopular term in office.

It's really interesting that anyone assumed HRC to run (and eventually win) the 2016 election, although she always declined an intention to run throughout 2013 and 2014. At some point I thought she may actually not run.

Those were fake

For some reason, it was customary for politicians to pretend they weren't running up until they announced despite how obvious it is.

Hillary and Jeb Bush swore they weren't running for president while fundraising millions. So did Rubio. There is a TIME magazine article from 2006 interviewing Obama, where he swears he isn't running in 2008. If you read his new book "The Promise Land" his team was preparing for a run since Kerry lost in 2004.

I appreciated how both Biden and Sanders were honest about running as soon as 2017.