Subject: Re: Themal: JRB says BB doesn't want to run
From: "Acdonilon" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Alex Snyder-Mackler" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Ted Kaufman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:12:37 -0500

I would say definitely not today. In my view, tomorrow would be better.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2010, at 10:58 AM, [email-masked] wrote:

> Sen k and I just talked and think this speaks clearly to moving with  
> email in am. Intend to call nj later this am.
>
> Question, does this speak to waiting until wed, as nj has requested,  
> so as not to appear to be reaction to this column? Don't think so  
> but.... Or even send it this afternoon, or also too much of a  
> reaction? My gut is tomorrow am.
> From: Alexander Snyder-Mackler <[email-masked]>
> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:52:38 -0500
> To: BB<[email-masked]>; Hunter Biden<[email-masked]>;  
> ted kaufman<[email-masked]>; Acdonilon<[email-masked]>
> Subject: Themal: JRB says BB doesn't want to run
>
> This is in this morning's opinion section with a headline across the  
> top, "VP: Beau Doesn't Want to Run"
>
> Mike -- do you know who was with him for this interview? Was this  
> off the record? It's Themal, so you never know. Nothing we can do at  
> this point, anyway.
>
> Our conversation ended with a surprising request from the vice  
> president as he hurried off to a national security meeting.  
> Spontaneously, he turned to the possible Delaware senatorial  
> campaign of his son Beau.
>
> Biden: "If you run into Beau, talk him into running; he respects you."
>
> Me: "I don't think he wants to run, though."
>
> Biden: "I don't think he does either. I know he doesn't want to. ...  
> I'm so proud of the job he's done [as attorney general]."
>
> Me: "Would you campaign for him [against Republican Mike Castle]?"
>
> Biden: "Hell, yes. I told him I'd give him my sixth-born grandchild."
>
> I doubt Beau Biden "respects" me, but it was quite startling to hear  
> the vice president confirm what many Democrats fear -- that Beau  
> does not want to be the candidate.
>
>
>
>
> January 24, 2010
>
> VP Biden: Beau doesn't want to run
>
> By HARRY F. THEMAL
> The News Journal
>
> In January 2009, when Joe Biden said goodbye to the Senate where he  
> had served for 36 years, he told his colleagues, "I will always be a  
> Senate man. Except for the title of 'father,' there is no title,  
> including 'vice president,' that I am more proud to wear than that  
> of United States senator."
>
> Now, one year later, he is dismayed by what has happened to the  
> Senate, and he is trying to convince a reluctant son to run for his  
> former seat.
>
> In a wide-ranging interview last week about his first year as vice  
> president, Biden said a "lamentable atmosphere" exists in the  
> Senate, a view he says is shared by some of his long-time Republican  
> friends. Sixty votes are needed to pass almost anything to forestall  
> a filibuster, because the Republicans are unanimously saying no. How  
> did a deliberative constitutional body lose the basic principle that  
> a majority -- in the Senate's case, 51 votes -- doesn't count?
>
> "I have never seen one party [standing] the rules on their head like  
> this," Biden says. "I can't think of a time when every single vote,  
> from an NLRB nomination to health care, required 60 votes. No  
> democracy can long be sustained where you can only rule by  
> supermajority."
>
> So Biden has constitutional scholars researching whether and how  
> such a stalemate can be broken. As vice president, he presides over  
> the Senate he so loves and where he can cast the tie-breaking vote.  
> "I never thought we would get a genuine bipartisanship on health  
> reform, but I also didn't think people would vote against funding  
> our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by directly voting against the  
> defense appropriation bill."
>
> Calling that Senate stalemate the greatest disappointment of his  
> first 12 months as the nation's second-highest elected official,  
> Biden said his two greatest surprises have been "institutional  
> constraints" and how he has become an "impact player." The  
> constraints he most chafes against are the security arrangements  
> required by his office, when "I got to have 28 Secret Service agents  
> when I take off," and when he cannot easily invite or circulate with  
> the Delawareans who have long been his friends.
>
> He is pleased with "how quickly I have been able to be an impact  
> player in the implementation of ideas and initiatives."
>
> We spoke after he had just had his weekly one-on-one meeting with  
> President Obama in a small dining room off the Oval Office. Over his  
> tomato soup and a cheeseburger, they discussed personal matters but  
> concentrated on foreign concerns and domestic issues that each  
> wanted to bring up. It's obvious Obama and he have created an  
> excellent working relationship.
>
> Biden has been the country's point man on Iraq, speaking frequently  
> to its leaders on the phone and inviting all parties to his  
> Washington office, and visiting the country now for the fourth time.  
> He is concerned that 500 candidates have been disqualified for the  
> coming election. As a New York Times Magazine profile headlined in  
> November, Biden "could be the second-most-powerful vice president in  
> history" as a "foreign policy sage, sounding board, senatorial arm- 
> twister, troubleshooter."
>
> According to his office, Biden is projected to be the most-traveled  
> vice president ever, already having visited 14 countries and having  
> met more than 120 foreign officials in their countries and in  
> Washington. The office also compiled some other achievements for  
> that first year: He oversaw the White House Middle Class Task Force  
> and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; raised funds for 33  
> candidates from 19 states; "was instrumental in Sen. Arlen Specter's  
> switch to the Democratic Party"; hosted more than 5,000 people (with  
> wife Jill) at their official home at the Naval Observatory and has  
> made "fighting for veterans and military families a major priority."
>
> Biden's analysis of the Democrats' loss in Massachusetts was similar  
> to others'. The key problem for the Democrats may have been that the  
> Republicans campaigned against the health care bill in the only  
> state that already covers almost all of its citizens. He felt that  
> Democrat Martha Coakley "paid virtually no attention to the race,  
> always a disaster. ... I don't think the Republicans would have been  
> ahead had she hit the ground running." He also called the GOP  
> winner, Scott Brown, an "attractive personality, who came across as  
> confident, was a good campaigner."
>
> He didn't mention it, but Biden himself was a virtual unknown  
> quantity when he won his first term against the popular J. Caleb  
> Boggs in 1972 in perhaps as much of an upset.
>
> It certainly seems as if the president's coattails are very short  
> these days, since not only did Coakley lose in a strongly Democratic  
> state but Republican governors were recently elected in New Jersey  
> and Virginia. Obama campaigned for Democrats in all three states.  
> Biden does not draw a doomsday conclusion from that for the November  
> elections.
>
> "Initially you'll see great consternation, wringing of hands, 'Does  
> this mean our administration is dead?' " Biden said. He points out  
> that after the 2008 election when the Republicans got clobbered,  
> "people said the Republican Party is dead and buried and gone  
> forever," but it's bounced back.
>
> "As far as the Democrats may be down in the polls, the Republicans  
> are down further," he pointed out. Even though both congressional  
> parties are in the 20s or 30s percentage-wise, both the president  
> and the vice president continue to rate in the 50s and 60s. To win  
> in November, "we have to focus on what's on people's immediate  
> plate. If by November the president is able to stand up and say, 'I  
> kept my commitment,' and all combat troops are out of Iraq, and we  
> again have the beginnings of a functioning democracy there, we have  
> the support of the international community to deal with Iran, we  
> have halted the job loss and have created more than a million jobs,"  
> chances are good for the Democrats.
>
> "That's in contrast with the Republicans, who have offered virtually  
> nothing."
>
> Biden cited Obama's forceful aid to Haiti as showing the level of  
> competency Delawareans always approved.
>
> In contrast, he thinks President George W. Bush's handling of the  
> devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and the Gulf  
> Coast was probably the "most single damaging thing that happened to  
> George Bush."
>
> Our conversation ended with a surprising request from the vice  
> president as he hurried off to a national security meeting.  
> Spontaneously, he turned to the possible Delaware senatorial  
> campaign of his son Beau.
>
> Biden: "If you run into Beau, talk him into running; he respects you."
>
> Me: "I don't think he wants to run, though."
>
> Biden: "I don't think he does either. I know he doesn't want to. ...  
> I'm so proud of the job he's done [as attorney general]."
>
> Me: "Would you campaign for him [against Republican Mike Castle]?"
>
> Biden: "Hell, yes. I told him I'd give him my sixth-born grandchild."
>
> I doubt Beau Biden "respects" me, but it was quite startling to hear  
> the vice president confirm what many Democrats fear -- that Beau  
> does not want to be the candidate.
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> Alexander Snyder-Mackler
> (302) 598-867