2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden hasn’t been spending as much time in the Super Tuesday states as one would expect ahead of the critical batch of primaries next week — and it could cost him.
As the saying goes, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is hard to remember that your primary mission was to drain the swamp. If Biden does not survive S. Carolina, nothing he does in the Super Tuesday states matters. Since he has limited resources, it makes sense for Biden to focus his attention on S. Carolina. I suspect that if he does well enough (e.g., excels) in S. CArolina that the funding floodgates will open. For his sake (and ours) I hope he is not too late.
Totally unexpectedly, V.P. Biden has become the Obi Wan Kenobi of the current election cycle! 
Well, this seems like an egg and chicken thing. Without winning races, there’s no money and no groundgame, but with no groundgame, donors don’t have the confidence to invest.
Agreed…and before the expected deluge of Bernie-bots, let’s just say that I have been around Civil Rights leaders since the 1960s…have spoken with them and understand that voting for many of the people Biden is counting on takes on a special significance, given the fact that, in places like SC, many of the people Joe is counting on have deep feelings about things that others not in their position do not.**
That’s why Jim Clyburn’s short talk (shown on O’Donnell’s show last night), which was quite emotional for me, regarding Biden was worth a dozen focus groups and “outreach efforts” in a state like SC.
** Mayor Pete, for example, made some dismissive remarks about 1960s protests, which, for a lot of African Americans I was in college with, would settle the Mayor Pete Question once and for all: clueless w/r/t POC. (O’Donnell pointed out Pete’s cluelessness as well)
It’s hard not to read this and think that he’s repeating the same basic mistake as Hillary did in 2008–the electoral equivalent of being born on 3rd base and thinking he’s hit a triple.
You’d think, given how this thing has gone even before the primaries, that he’d have woken up to how things are shaping up. Far be it from me to give Trump credit for anything, but his nickname “Sleepy Joe” might be accurate, after all.
Very HRC of him to assume coronation is the same as actual organization.
I mean, look at 2008, both candidates were pulling in a lot of money, at the very least. This is way way worse.
Folks are a little spoiled by Obama and Clinton, but there is no organization capable of covering that many states in that short of a time period. Biden is also competing in an era where Billionaire money has flooded the primaries essentially devaluing the impact of every campaign dollar raised and spent. There is no amount of ads Biden could run that Bloomberg doesn’t top by a factor of 1000x.
Biden’s best asset is his brand and name ID. The best thing he can do to win on Super Tuesday is to win in SC by as big a margin as possible. That will have a ripple effect across the South among black voters and white moderates to line up behind him. We’re seeing such trends happen in polling, including this morning’s poll out of FL, where it’s Biden now leading Bloomberg and leading Dems among both white and black voters. By the time we get to Super Tuesday, I suspect that will be the case throughout pretty much all of the South.
I think that’s what the headline wants us to do. Strike terror = more clicks.
That’s true to some extent, but I think in Biden’s case, its more a case of how they have been addressing this whole campaign.
They were working from the perspective of being “the front runner, with a strong AA voter bloc, ensuring the nomination”. About the time that started to get wobbly, they were too far behind in the fundraising to really address it.
But the lackluster fundraising should have been setting off alarm bells months ago. Biden is far behind Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg in fundraising. The reality is, Biden had very little ground game in Iowa or NH, either. In fact, that was part of their spin coming out of IA.
And, like many of us have been saying, this isn’t like primary cycles of old; early voting and vote by mail…particularly with such big states voting early…meant any serious campaign needed to have feet on the ground in multiple states at the same time. One field office in the entire state of CA? That’s political malpractice.
But again, it circles back to what I call the “defensive posture” that his campaign has had since the day he started. Not just in constantly being defensive in response to things he said, it evident in how they have approached campaigning, too. “We don’t have to have an aggressive ground game, just hang back and his front runner status will do the work for us”
I don’t think his “brand” is all that great of an asset if you really look into it. Name ID? Sure.
If the economy is faltering, Bernie and Warren will resonate more with voters than Biden.
Added:
I’m looking at his brand as his record or what he stands for. But if you mean his brand as in name alone, I agree.
I see something incoherent in this. He ran on the message that white people will vote for him, so black people ditched candidates like Harris and Booker because they weren’t “safe”, then suddenly people started saying his strength is with black voters, not white voters, and we’re racists for writing him off after IA and NH. I mean, WTF??? So what about the presumed ability of winning back WWC?
That’s incorrect. It does however require a project plan approach to running the campaign, and that’s not something that campaigns have the experience or POV to do. At the very least, he should have multiple field offices up in CA, TX, and FL…months ago…and have those people building up volunteers. Warren has had people in FL since last fall, even here in the Panhandle. Biden has no on the ground presence.
This article isn’t talking about ad buys. Its talking about field organization. Bloomberg’s money is also doing a horrible job for him on the field. Building a field organization takes time, but its a much more valuable investment than trying to purchase up the airwaves.
That’s precisely the problem thinking that his campaign is suffering with. “Joe is the front runner, we just need voters to show up and vote for him, and he’ll win”. But if you don’t put in the effort to knock doors, and persuade people, they tend not to show up for primaries. You have to do the actual campaign work, too…not simply rely on having the most name recognition.
I’m talking about for Super Tuesday.
Biden’s brand is better than that of Bernie’s and Warren’s. He has respect in the black community. A lot of black folks will vote on Super Tuesday. If you look at the elections that Dems have won in the South and purple American it has been where moderate white Dems follow the lead of Black voters and align behind a candidate who is electable. That’s the trend building for Biden.
Like the white Dem electorate at large, this site has a real blind spot for minority points of view and perspectives.
For weeks now I’ve been seeing voters saying he doesn’t seem to want it very much. I’ve never heard of a hiring situation where you weren’t expected to show some real enthusiasm for the idea of being hired, is the thing. If he has to allocate time and other resources tactically that’s one thing but we know his lifelong style has been to complacently assume he has it coming or at least certainly to give that impression. I guess it’s too late to expect him to change now, but it may very well cost him.
And repeated in the 2016 General.
Joe’s strength is perceived electability and name recognition not strategy.
The last part too much mirrors HRC’s 2008 and 2016 candidacies.
So I’m terrified of Sanders, though admittedly I have no clue what would actually happen with his name top of ballot in purple and red states. Census year tho, so I’m freaking out.
I have been trying to get used to the idea of Biden. But these top 6 things are really sticking in my craw.
Iraq war vote and associated idiocy
writing the crime bill
writing bankruptcy bill
Anita Hill and paternalism and hair sniffing
78, obvious slowing mental acuity, lack of energy, poor performance at voter events
inability to parry questions about his son and fight back hard on Ukraine BS, plus the fact that this BS has worked on many middle of road voters who parrot idiot corruption stuff
support for filibuster and belief in GOP honor
credit card company race to the bottom in Delaware and playing footsie with financial services
the weird lying long before mental decline
focused on appearance of back to normal, unlikely to try to change much
Is it just me, or is this image of Joe Biden pretty appalling? I know it’s real, but it does seem like the worst photo TPM could choose to use from that event. He looks both alien and near-death.
I don’t think that is what happened. Biden started out with pretty strong AA support from the moment he threw his hat in the ring. Booker never had it, and Harris looked like she might have it, but through a series of walk backs and missteps, it never materialized.
I don’t think people were saying it was racist to write him off after IA and NH. Perhaps a little premature, yes. He didn’t campaign heavily in either state (a mistake, IMO…you can maybe cut corners in one, but then you have to go big in the other…never write both off), but the bigger problem this article is raising is…he isn’t actually campaigning heavily anywhere. Part of that may be money, but then, where is he spending the money he has raised, if its not on ground game organization or ads?