Bauer made his bones by convincing courts to ignore election laws and protocols to keep open selective polling places to Democrats’ advantage. He spent his early legal career lamenting money’s role in campaigns but ended up deriving an enviable lifestyle through his ability to cash campaign checks. Bauer can be trusted, as another high-profile Democratic attorney once said, to offer a “vigorous defense of the indefensible.”

Of course, you can’t talk about Bauer without mentioning his wife, SKDK partner and Biden confidante Anita Dunn. Biden is thought of as an old-school guy, but he is quickly catching up with the times. It used to be if you wanted to make money off government, you enlisted your brothers and sons to profit off your name, and so it was that the “Big Guy” cashed in on every XY chromosome in the family tree. Such operations have stained the honor of numerous public servants from the Kennedy family on to Biden’s personal favorite lobbyists, the Ricchetti brothers. Today, we demand that our elite families let the girls be handy.

No couple has benefited more from equal representation in cronyism than Dunn and Bauer, who have spent their careers as a “power couple” tag-teaming the public and private sectors. These Bethesda-based dog parents have perfected the art of the shakedown once reserved for the Al Sharptons of the world. Dunn went from demonizing hedge funds and Wall Street as Obama’s communications director to pitching these same entities to pay her firm gobs of money to beat back regulators.

[Their reappearance now seems to indicate that Biden will run again in 2024. Otherwise, who needs Dunn and Bauer? Biden could simply ride out the clock without them. — Ed]