Mark Halperin Gins Up 2016 Buzz For Someone Else Who Probably Won’t Run For President

Mark Halperin attends the world premiere of "Knife Fight" during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday, April 25, 2012 in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini)
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Mark Halperin, perhaps the most famous Beltway pundit, knows that you’ve got to milk it when you have a piping hot take on the next presidential race to share.

And so Halperin wasn’t just going to blurt out the name of the figure who he said is clearly the “most likely” to derail Hillary Clinton’s White House ambitions. Instead, he played to the crowd — or rather, his more than 80,000 followers on Twitter — and offered driblets of clues on Wednesday.

OK, that eliminates the likes of Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. Go on.

Ralph Nader? Just kidding.

We’re getting warmer. Time for the big reveal.

Al Gore 2016! Who’d have thought? Well, nobody really — except for Halperin, who also floated the possibility of a John Kerry presidential run late last year.

“Let me just say quickly, if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run for president I bet you John Kerry does,” Halperin said during a December appearance on MSNBC, leaving his fellow panelists stunned.

The on-air speculation gave life to a storyline that nobody should have taken seriously, and the secretary of state eventually had to put an end to the rumors.

“I’m out of politics. I have no plans whatsoever. This is my last stop,” Kerry told CNN in February.

And now, somebody gets to ask Gore about his White House ambitions.

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