Former Vice President Joe Biden took two full weeks to finally publicly vocalize his support for Democrats impeachment inquiry– a probe launched primarily over the President’s efforts to pressure a foreign government to investigate him and his son Hunter Biden.
He finally pulled his finger out of his ass, held it aloft and tested the winds.
And if that one thing would make you less likely to vote for him good grief!
Well, as long as he’s doing it for the right reasons.
Any time a candidate has to be told that he’s hemorrhaging, he doesn’t have a chance. Biden decided to sleep through this one, and when he finally woke up he was no longer the front runner. From here on he’ll just keep slipping in the polls. I bet he won’t even place in the top three in Iowa. Good riddance.
A man who takes two weeks to decide to defend his family is not a man you can count on to defend your family.
Biden thinks his association with Obama helps him. Obama knew the Russians were attacking us, but was too afraid of McConnell to tell us the truth. We are owed the truth.
Hard pass on Biden. The time for Democrats who are afraid of their own shadow, and terrified of confrontation, has passed.
I don’t think Joe is going to win this nomination. Just like 2008 when everyone thought Hillary was a foregone conclusion and then a young upstart like Obama started growing in the polls. Look at Elizabeth Warren’s trajectory.
Every time I hear her speak I love her more.
Oh, oh there are going to be some people really upset with this article.
I had felt that Biden’s hesitation had partly to do with protecting his son from the attacks from the Trumper media. In my view, if you want to beat Trump you have to have the stomach for it because there is no bottom with him. He is a depraved human being. He would view Biden’s personal loss as something to exploit, not something to steer clear of.
It is good to see Biden go after the NY Times and to take Trump head on here. It might mean he has developed the mind set needed to win.
The question for him is consistency and frequency. In a general election campaign when Trump is going to be on tv setting the news cycle every day and going to his rallies with his MAGA hordes, does Biden have the ability to step up his rhythm to do 3-4 rallies a week plus an interview and some fundraising? It requires a lot of schedule discipline and a lot of campaigns, even well run ones, don’t get the balance right.
Biden also reportedly was cautious to speak out to protect his son. The vice president reportedly told friends ahead of his campaign announcement this year that he was worried “they’re going to go after my boy.”
I wouldn’t mind being Biden’s son. I’d love to run an art gallery. I don’t know a damn thing about running an art gallery. Don’t have any significant connections in the art world. Never went to school and studied art. Never even had a job in anything art related. But I bet if Biden was elected President, and I was his son, I could get a job running an art gallery.
Thankfully, Reality Winner was not too afraid.
Sucks she had to go to prison for it.
His health, both physical and mental, is not going to allow him to hold as many rallies as he did in 2016. Also, the MSM has been steadily losing interest in televising those rallies. Finally, Trump has done away with perhaps one of the biggest incumbent advantages…the Press Secretary.
Nobody should be running for President if they can’t make 3-4 public stump speeches a week. They shouldn’t be running if they can’t do several a day. Biden is no where near that mark today. And on the fundraising side of the equation, Biden had a really bad quarter. The money is already drying up on him.
He was late on this. I get some of the reasons why, but I think the biggest reason isn’t being mentioned.
Which is, his entire campaign has been in a reflexive defensive crouch since it officially started, they just naturally assumed that position on this topic too. It took them this long to realize “Hey, we need to actually take a step out on this one, instead of just turtling up”
I think these comments are overly harsh. As the front runner, I think Biden was reasonably concerned not to appear as though he had a vested interest in the impeachment of Trump. He didn’t want to be seen as nothing more than the Dem version of Trump, trying to knock off the competition before the nominations.
We can argue whether that was appropriate or not, but I think some of the criticisms above are unwarranted.
Do you think Biden or Warren would have the best chance of beating Trump.
Sure, I like Warren. I also know how the moneyed interests and corporate power will try to sabotage her chances if she is our final candidate. They would not go after Biden, many may prefer him to trump.
The media will have a huge influence also. How they cover things will dictate how many in the public will perceive the candidates.
Places where he holds his rallies may eventually get sick of picking up the cost of security for his campaign rallies. Minnesota is an example of that:
“they’re going to go after my boy.”
Yes, but they were going to do that anyways. At least show that your willing to fight back against it
I’m not a Biden supporter but he appears to be the Trump killer. Trump has never paid a political price like the one he is personally paying for having gone after him on this Ukraine stuff. Biden gets better press treatment than Hillary. People have more of a vested interest in lifting him up because of all that’s on the line. He appears to be a candidate that can get a healthy slice of WWC and minority support. He’s formidable.
People are going to judge Joe on really one thing: Does he have an A game to take it to Trump in the general election. If he does, he’ll win the primary fairly easily. If he doesn’t, he’ll slide quickly. The debate upcoming and his follow-up over these next 3 months will be very important to watch.
Ironically, if Trump were to resign (and I put that possibility at around 30%) the rationale for a Biden campaign ends, and he’d have to market himself as the elder statesman who can bring stability or something like that.
He is following, not leading. As this article states, part of this decision was because he is falling behind in the polls.
Warren and others, for example, came out for impeachment as soon as the Mueller report was released.
Taking a position on impeaching Trump for committing impeachable offenses, isn’t trying to knock off the competition before the nominations. Which, btw, is precisely what every candidate is trying to do…its called winning the nomination.
I stand by the above criticisms, which btw, don’t even touch upon his decision to finally get behind impeachment. He isn’t doing a large number of campaign appearances compared to the other candidates, he is doing poorly on the fundraising front. And his campaign has been stuck in a defensive crouch since the day it officially launched.
This campaign, like all campaigns, is going to be won by driving out our base. Enthusiasm is always the key. Biden playing “prevent defense” isn’t going to get our base excited. Anyone who is preaching that Biden is more “electable” because he can sway conservatives and independents better than anyone else, is preaching a recipe for losing.
IIRC, Obama tried gently to warn Biden off by telling him “don’t do this to yourself”… Who would know better than Obama what strengths and weaknesses Joe would bring to the campaign trail.
To his credit though, Joe appears to be listening to folks and adapting. I’ve been pretty critical of the Joe campaign after a great launch, but yesterday was the first sign I got that he might actually be up to this.
I strongly disagree, except for the fact that he has minority support…right now. We win elections by having a more energized base than the other side. People who aren’t in the base, instinctively lean towards the candidate who is perceived as better energizing their respective base.
We do not win by trying to appeal to disaffected conservatives or conservative leaning Indies. Specific, issue centric strategy and tactics can be formed to reach out to those people eventually, but the main focus has to always be on turning out the base. In large numbers.
You seem to put a tremendous amount of emphasis on the debates. I find that curious. First because Biden has not done well in any of the debates so far. Second, because we are pretty much in the point of the primary campaign where debates, barring some disaster on someone’s part, barely impact polls. Its the preaching to the choir point; if you like Biden, you are going to think Biden did great; if you like Warren, you are going to think she did great. If you are undecided, you’re probably still going to be undecided.
They key movers are going to be things that happen off the debate stage. Example: Harris scored points in her first attack on Biden re: working with segregationists and school busing. Then she immediately started back pedaling from those comments. Result: her numbers started a steady decline that she will never recover from. Because of what happened OFF the stage, not on it.
That question predisposes that Biden is “the” candidate, and nobody else is being considered for that same question. Lets look at Warren for a recent example. Right Wing nut jobs tried to smear her with made up fantasy of hiring a “marine” to be her sex toy. She laughed it off and made it a joke (The Houston Cougar tweet was well placed). THAT’S an A game for dealing with Trump. She also has been unabashed about the need to impeach him.
Compare that to Biden. He has been fretting about whether to impeach Trump, even after Trump is quite literally abusing his power to smear Biden and his son. Then, after several weeks…and lots of pressure from donors…he finally comes out (I think the last candidate to do so, certainly the last top tier candidate) for impeachment…THAT is not an A game for dealing with Trump.