Everybody recognizes there are far more questions than these. These seem simple in comparison to being asked, for example, how does he justify taking $200K for speaking on behalf on a R candidate Fred Upton during the midterm who went on to defeat the D candidate.
Why has he not offered the apology directly to Ms. Hill that he has said he owes her but she says she’s never received.
Does he regret not kissed in return by Strom Thurmond?
While this is true, the problem is that every candidate already thinks the answer is yes (for himself or herself against Trump), and it can only really be proven in an actual election and thus evaluated in hindsight.
I don’t think @thomasmatthew meant an oddball necessarily, just someone out of left field that the party never expected to win. I think that’s a possibility too. You split votes and split votes among numerous candidates, a majority result becomes difficult to achieve, and the possibility of a surprise candidate winding up with a plurality increases.
It’s understandable that there’s focus on Biden and Bernie. Name recognition is invaluable, and they have that but it won’t carry the day when other candidates are now putting forth proposals and ideas and Joe doesn’t yet even have anyone running his campaign.
Personally, I think Biden has a lot more than those four questions to answer, although that is a good start. I think he will find that it is hard to overcome established impressions. He is not only going to have to present himself in a favorable light, and explain away some very problematic past and present positions, but also contrast himself against a strong field of alternative candidates. I do not expect to vote for Biden in the primary, and I hope that he is not our nominee, but as I keep saying, and will continue to say until after the election, I will vote for him the general election if he is our nominee.
Could just be nothing more than Huddle with Bigot. Or Joe was trying to revive The Old Bigot after all the oxygen he consumed while droning on and on and on in questioning Thomas which left TOB exhausted.
@outis Add to the list of questions, his coziness with the banking industry in DEL. I too hope he not the nominee and frankly I might leave the box blank where it says “Vote For One.”
I agree with the first part, but cannot do so for the second. Even if we had a candidate in a full irrecoverable coma, that would be better than a Trump second term.
That’s not really true. Greg Schultz is apparently going to be his official campaign manager. Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon have been doing most of the early organizing work so far, including lining up rest of the campaign staff
The problem is these are long time Biden friends/supporters. And, as this article indicates, Biden really hasn’t run a serious winning campaign in a long, long, long time. The early missteps I have seen don’t exactly fill me with confidence that this one is going to be any different from this past Presidential runs.
Still, I am glad he is officially getting in tomorrow (assuming they don’t shoot themselves in the foot on that announcement yet again). Hovering on the sidelines keeps his numbers artificially high…though I suspect that is by design not accident. Skipping the CNN Town Halls that have been happening seems to be a huge misstep to me, but clearly they planned on a launch date (even though they ended up rescheduling even that) that would avoid the last one.
I may be wrong, but right now, I just don’t see Biden running from a position of strength.
There really is only 1 question listed here, IMO…and that’s the first one. Biden hasn’t run and won a competitive campaign in freaking decades. And lost really bad in both of this other Presidential runs.
All the others are pretty much baked into the mix with Biden…none of them is exactly breaking news.
The problem with the other questions is…its going to put Biden’s campaign on the defensive early on, as he tries to answer these questions. That’s not a good place for him (or any candidate, particularly a tentative front runner) to be.
Name recognition is a huge advantage, but having a well-documented record of a mixed nature is a huge disadvantage. The question will be which cancels out the other.
Left field can also simply mean unexpected or surprising. It doesn’t necessarily mean strange or odd, and I don’t think that’s what @thomasmatthew meant. But only he knows for sure.
To you. To me it calls to mind the surprise of Trump in the way that he surprised the Republican party establishment and the whole country by winning the nomination. His obvious lack of qualifications and aptitude for the job are not what calling his victory left field connotes to me. But there’s no right or wrong here. Left-field is a term with multiple uses and meanings. And the risk is simply a candidate that may not represent the best chance we’ve got.