Filler: Don't bet on Clinton or Biden in '16

It's become clear that the Republican nomination will go to Mitt Romney this year, and that can only mean one thing: time to kick off the 2016 race. Out this week was a poll showing Hillary Clinton with a huge lead among possible Democratic candidates in 2016, with 57 percent. Vice President Joe Biden was second (14 percent).

In fact, neither of these stalwarts stands a chance of being elected, and both are extremely unlikely to be nominated -- just as Rick Santorum had no shot at the Republican nod this time.

If you want to know who liberals and conservatives will nominate, you have to understand what they really want.

When people say "Republicans always pick the next guy in line," they're not just whistling Dixie (although Southern support does help). That's what "conservative" means.

True conservatives remember the virtues of 1954, but not the inequities, and crave a return to that era. If they can't reverse time, they'll try to make it stop. Their ideal candidates (Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Robert Young in "Father Knows Best") are dead, so they support ones who remind them of those guys, and with whom they're comfortable.

Mitt Romney lost in 2008 to John McCain, who lost in 2000 to George W. Bush, who had governed Texas for eight years and was the son of a president. Before Junior, the Republicans had Bob Dole in 1996, who lost the nomination in 1980 and '88; George Bush the Elder, who lost to Reagan in 1980 and was his vice president for eight years; and Reagan, who lost to Ford on the convention floor in 1976.

Their ideal candidates are so open-minded, multicultural and gender-blind we haven't evolved enough to produce them yet, so Dems seek the next best thing: fresh, young candidates without any significant track record.

They had Walter Mondale, who had been vice president, but got crushed. Mike Dukakis and John Kerry never sought national office before being nominated. The Dem's best recent shot at running the next pol in line was Al Gore, who had been vice president, and had run for president, but again, he didn't win.

Really. He didn't. Get over it.

There's a reason Democrats mostly support societal changes good and bad, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, civil and women's' rights, the welfare state, urban renewal and gay marriage, while Republicans mostly stymie them. As William F. Buckley Jr. declared: "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling 'Stop.' " A liberal stands behind history, shoving it, screaming, "Hurry up." It's the compromise between the two -- the recognition of the value of our traditions and the value of improving upon them -- that's made this nation great. But when prognosticating, we must remember who is who.

At that point, they'll be no match for the shiny young Democrats and their promises of fission-powered air conditioners to end global warming, much less the reanimated cadaver of Robert Young they might have to face in the general election.