Subject: Vox: The case for Joe Biden to run for president
From: "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Steve Richetti" <[email-masked]>, "Acdonilon" <[email-masked]>, "ted kaufman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:55:59 -0400

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/9/8922395/Joe-Biden-run-president
The case for Joe Biden to run for presidentby Jonathan Allen
<http://www.vox.com/authors/jonathan-allen> on July 9, 2015, 1:20 p.m. ET
[email-masked]

The case for a Joe Biden presidential candidacy has never been clearer.

The vice president is the natural heir to, and most ardent defender of,
President Barack Obama's legacy. In a time of polarization and Republican
control of Congress, he's the Democrat with the best record of working with
Republicans on Capitol Hill. And he may be the only Democrat who could be a
viable alternative — and viable threat — to frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Couple those factors with the recent rise of Bernie Sanders, which points
as much to Clinton's vulnerability as Sanders's strength, and the odds of
Biden giving Clinton a serious run for her money don't look so long. Both
of his sons, Beau and Hunter Biden, encouraged him to run before Beau died
in May, the Wall Street Journal reported
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/will-he-run-biden-speculation-mounts-1435529527>
last month.

Biden hasn't given any public indication of whether he'll run or not, and
those closest to him aren't talking about it, citing the vice president's
grieving process. But in interviews with Biden supporters, there's a clear
desire to see him make a third bid for the presidency.

"I have to believe that he will look at this race, see what the electorate
is clamoring for, and see that he has as good a path" as anyone, said one
of Biden's 2008 presidential campaign aides.

And Biden is clearly hearing about the interest as he weighs whether to run.

"We have had conversations about the possibility of him running," said
Joseph Darby, a high-ranking official in the African Methodist Episcopal
church who is close to some of South Carolina's most powerful politicians,
including Rep. Jim Clyburn.

  Darby said a Biden candidacy "would play well" with South Carolina
Democrats, but added that the vice president had given no indication of
which way he's leaning in one brief conversation about the presidential
race after Beau Biden's death.

Clinton still has massive advantages: a campaign stocked with many of the
top operatives in the business, a $45 million fundraising head start, an
endless donor list, and polling that shows a majority of Democrats still
prefer her to the rest of the party's field of contenders — including Biden.

But the Sanders surge shows that Democratic activists want an alternative
to Clinton. How else to explain the $15 million he raised in his first
fundraising quarter, the massive crowds at his rallies, and his climb in
the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire? Sanders has captured the hearts of
some liberal white elites. That's enough to draw a little blood from the
Clinton campaign but not enough to win the presidential primary of a party
built on a diverse coalition. It would take someone with broader appeal to
actually beat her. Someone, perhaps, like Biden.

"It’s less about her, and it’s more about what a lot of Democratic primary
voters want, which is somebody who is authentic, unabashedly progressive,
and a fighter," the former Biden campaign aide said. "Joe Biden ought to
scare the Clinton folks."
The case for Biden

In any normal election cycle, Biden would be the hands-down favorite to win
the Democratic nomination to succeed Obama. No vice president who has
sought his party's nomination after a two-term presidency has ever lost it.
In the handful of cases in which a vice president didn't seek a
presidential nomination after serving a two-term boss, it was usually
because of a major rift in the party — such as when John C. Calhoun, the
vice president to Andrew Jackson, returned to the Senate to push for
nullification and ultimately South Carolina's secession from the union.

But there is no such divide in today's Democratic Party. Biden has become a
beloved figure among Democrats for his loyal defense of Obama's agenda and
his propensity to say what the constraints of the presidency prevent Obama
from saying.

As vice president, Biden has been Obama's right-hand man for six-plus
years. He's run point for Obama on major foreign and domestic policy
matters — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2009 stimulus law, the auto
bailout, gun control, and budget deals with Senate Republicans who would
rather dive from the Capitol dome than shake hands with Obama in public. He
even put the exclamation point on enactment of the Affordable Care Act with
a salty observation that endeared him to fellow Democrats.

Biden's rare breaks with the president now look, in retrospect, like key
contributions to Obama's story. Biden announced, in the throes of the 2012
reelection campaign, that he supported same-sex marriage, a position to
which Obama had not yet "evolved" and that Clinton wouldn't publicly
embrace until 2013. But just last month, Obama celebrated the Supreme
Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage across the country.

Biden's also a safer bet than Clinton to focus on preserving Obama's legacy
— a matter of great concern to Obama
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/cuba-opening-ushers-in-era-of-mas-obama-119652.html>
now — because he shared in building it in both terms and served only one
president.

"His tenure as vice president is certainly a huge positive for Obama
supporters everywhere," said Angela Rye, a Democratic strategist and former
executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Yet Biden would start a candidacy as a clear underdog to Clinton. In a
Quinnipiac
poll of registered Democrats
<http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/ia/ia07022015_I257tha.pdf> at the
end of June, Clinton led Biden 58 percent to 17 percent, with Bernie
Sanders third at 15 percent. Biden has been in the single digits in recent
polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Sanders has been closing his gap
with Clinton. His national name recognition and work as vice president
should open up some fundraising doors, but buckraking has never been a
political strength for Biden.

Polls are a snapshot in time, and Biden would surely be able to attract
enough money and attention to make his case to the Democratic Party. He
could reshape fundamental assumptions about the race, said one adviser to a
2016 Democratic campaign.

"If he gets in, it shows that her inevitability aura has faded, and it
frees up donors and key political groups to not fall in line behind
Hillary," this adviser said. "Right now there is a herd mentality with
political groups, elected officials, and a large swath of donors — they
have been told so many times that Hillary will be the nominee and that they
will be frozen out if she's elected that they don't want to cross her. If
the sitting vice president gets in, that changes."

Still, he'd have to pull an inside straight to beat Clinton.
The dealmaker

One of the biggest knocks against Obama — one that often comes from within
his own party
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/us/aloof-obama-is-frustrating-his-own-party.html?_r=0>
— is that he would have gotten more accomplished if only he'd had better
relationships with Republicans, and Democrats, on Capitol Hill.

It's an attractive idea. Voters are fed up with dysfunction in Congress,
and they keep electing presidents — George W. Bush and Obama, to name two —
who promise they'll come to Washington and end the gridlock. Maybe Clinton
could do better than Obama in reaching across the aisle — or forcing
Republicans to vote with her. But it's likelier that Republicans would have
the same partisan reaction to her as president that they did when she was
first lady. Fear of the grinding partisanship of a President Hillary
Clinton is part of what got Obama elected in the first place.

But Biden has an actual record of working with congressional Republicans
from the White House. He may be the last remaining Democrat who really
knows the art of the bipartisan deal. He came to the Senate
<http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000444> in 1973,
an era before hyper-partisanship devoured Congress. When Obama needed to
cut a deal with Republican leaders on the Hill, he sent Biden. That wasn't
always a great move for Democratic priorities — one Biden agreement permanently
locked in most of the expiring Bush tax cuts
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-mcconnell-and-biden-pulled-congress-away-from-the-fiscal-cliff/2013/01/02/992fe6de-5501-11e2-8e84-e933f677fe68_story.html>
— but it worked to avert a fiscal cliff. (Senate Democratic leader Harry
Reid was so infuriated with Biden's dealmaking that he at one point
insisted the vice president be cut out of budget talks
<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/joe-biden-government-shutdown-debt-ceiling-97969.html>
).

Eric Cantor, the former Republican House majority leader, told Time magazine
<http://time.com/3581463/eric-cantor-joe-biden-negotiation/> last year that
Biden was a much better negotiating partner than Obama.

"Unquestionably, the vice president knows how to negotiate. He understands
people," Cantor said. "I’m certainly not one who agrees with Joe Biden on
all things — we probably disagree more than we agree — but from a human and
relationship standpoint, the guy’s awesome."

The key to Biden's deals is those deep relationships. He was asked to
deliver a eulogy at Republican Senator Strom Thurmond's funeral, even after
he and Thurmond clashed over decades' worth of issues on the Judiciary
Committee.

And South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham — a Republican presidential
candidate who speaks frequently with Biden — recently choked up talking
about him.

While there are Republican senators who say they like to work with Clinton,
it's hard to see any of them becoming deeply emotional about their history
with her.
Contrasts in substance and style

Those familiar with the thinking of Biden's circle say he would try to run
a campaign framed around himself, not Clinton. Obama proved in 2008 that
Democrats are receptive to messages that highlight differences without
going negative. "Change we can believe in" was a slogan that, subtly enough
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/A_changed_slogan_The_Change_We_Need.html>,
pointed to Clinton's emphasis on her experience and Democrats' doubts about
her honesty.

On style, the contours of a positively framed Biden contrast with Clinton
are easy to see. He's endeared himself to Democratic voters — not to
mention late-night comedians — with an unvarnished style that makes him
seem all too human. It could prove a powerful trait against Clinton, who is
stiff on the campaign trail and in television interviews. Biden's
backslapping candor — a double-edged sword that often gets him in trouble —
is more reminiscent of Bill Clinton's charismatic style.

"Joe has a wonderful ability to connect with people," Darby said. "They
both have a feel for the needs of America in general and minority
communities in particular. I think Joe’s demeanor makes you feel that he
has a deeper understanding of that."

More important, perhaps, is the substantive difference between Clinton and
Biden on foreign policy, where the former Delaware senator often took a
dovish line in internal debates in the White House and Clinton was usually
on the side of using military force. Clinton wanted to add troops in
Afghanistan when Biden didn't, recommended executing the raid on Osama bin
Laden as Biden recommended against it, and pushed for the US intervention
in Libya in 2011, which Biden opposed.

While there's no political gain in having been on the wrong side of the bin
Laden debate, many Democrats — particularly the kind of activists who show
up at Iowa caucuses
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8097-2005Jan13.html> — are
wary of Clinton's more hawkish leanings. Biden's preference for drawing
down from Afghanistan and his opposition to the Libya intervention — which,
to this point, has been a disaster — are pluses with Democratic primary
voters.

And the very feature of a Biden candidacy that Republicans would jump on in
a general election — his loyal support for Obama's agenda — would be a
tremendous boon for the vice president in a primary.
For Biden, South Carolina would be the proving ground

Clinton has done a good job of positioning herself with the various
Democratic constituencies, and that's reflected in the fact that a majority
of Democrats support her in the primary. Sanders's camp believes that
Clinton is vulnerable with working-class white Democrats, who are a group
that Biden — born near the coal mines of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania —
has a natural ease with. And Sanders's surge in Iowa and New Hampshire
demonstrates that Clinton already has a fight on her hands in those states.

But her connection with Hispanic voters remains strong. They backed her
against Obama overwhelmingly, and if there's one Democratic-leaning group
that has been most consistently dissatisfied with Obama, it's been Latinos.
For the most part, Biden would have to look elsewhere to build his
coalition.

That's why South Carolina, where he's advocated for federal
involvement in dredging
the Port of Charleston
<http://www.dredgingtoday.com/2015/02/19/the-grow-america-in-charleston/>
and where he has visited repeatedly in the wake of the murder of nine black
worshipers at "Mother Emanuel," provides such a fascinating crucible for
Biden. He almost certainly would have to win over a significant portion of
the nation's black voters to compete with Clinton, and South Carolina is
the first state on the primary calendar with a significant black
population. In fact, the majority of voters in Democratic primaries in
South Carolina are black, and Clinton received only 26.5 percent of the vote
<http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/states/SC.html>
there — against Obama and a reeling John Edwards — in 2008.

A Biden coalition would necessarily follow the path that Obama took, though
it seems highly unlikely to replicate Obama's success with black voters.
The key would be to combine enough support from elite whites, working-class
whites, and African Americans to win delegates in states he would lose to
Clinton and run up the delegate score in smaller-population states. Sound
familiar?

None of that is to say that Biden would beat Clinton in the primary. But in
conversations I've had with Clinton allies, there's a recognition that he
might run and that he could force her to compete harder for votes she might
otherwise have locked up easily. Biden's team is tight-lipped right now.
Smart politicians don't telegraph their intentions any earlier than they
feel that they have to. But the case for Biden is waiting for him to make
it.

-- 

Alexander Snyder Mackler
(302) 598-867