Subject: Joe Biden’s Political Moment - NationalJournal.com
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Joshua Alcorn" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander Snyder-Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 07:46:13 -0400

Joe Biden’s Political Moment - NationalJournal.com

http://www.nationaljournal.com/against-the-grain/joe-biden-s-political-moment-20150728

Joe Biden’s Political Moment

July 28, 2015 For Democratic leaders, the political logic of having Hillary
Clinton as the party's standard bearer in 2016 was, at least for a while,
undeniable. President Obama could maintain middling approval ratings, but
Clinton's distance from political life as secretary of State gave her ample
distance from the president's most controversial policies. Voters may be
looking for change, but Clinton's bid to become the first female president
gave her campaign a historic sheen that few others could provide. Most
significantly, Clinton's independent brand (and record of opposing certain
presidential decisions
<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/>)
would allow her to triangulate: distance herself from the White House when
necessary, while also supporting Obama on other core issues.

It's the main reason Obama personally praised Clinton when she left the
Cabinet, and has never offered any similar political shout-out to his loyal
vice president, Joe Biden. Even if he wanted to run, Biden would have
trouble broadening his support beyond Obama's coalition, and as an older
white man, would probably face challenges exciting the core of nonwhite
voters who make up the base of Obama's support. Clinton, thanks to her
husband, held more of a political track record on that front—and had the
capability of maximizing the gender gap in the Democrats' favor.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation. Throughout the
summer, Clinton has been hammered over using a secret, personal email
server as secretary of State—one that government officials believe may have
compromised the country's national security and allowed her to conceal (and
delete) email correspondence. Meanwhile, as she faces energetic opposition
from her party's progressive base, she's decided to tack to the left,
offering little to disaffected swing voters dissatisfied with Obama. Her
campaign operatives believe it's worth mobilizing the Democratic Party's
ascendant constituencies without offering much to the (shrinking) number of
voters in the middle.

In the process, however, her favorable ratings have hit all-time lows, with
clear majorities of Americans saying they don't like her and have trouble
believing she's trustworthy. In the critical swing states of New Hampshire,
Iowa, Colorado, and Virginia, reputable new polls show her favorability
ratings not much better than Donald Trump's—with unfavorable ratings
nearing 60 percent. Quinnipiac's swing-state polling found her losing in
Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia to all three leading GOP candidates (Jeb Bush,
Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker), while NBC News/Marist polling found her
favorability ratings to be just as dismal in Iowa and New Hampshire.
National polling doesn't put her in much better shape, with her
favorability still upside-down in CNN/ORC's new poll
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/26/politics/cnn-orc-data/index.html> (45/48,
among all adults). Gallup found her overall favorability at 43/46, her
worst net showing since their November 2007 survey. Her numbers aren't any
better than Obama's, and many polls are finding them in worse shape.

Suddenly, if you're Joe Biden, running for president makes a lot more
political sense.
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If Obama's former campaign strategists truly believe
<https://twitter.com/geoffgarin/status/608638164874444800> that a
Democratic candidate only needs to mobilize and microtarget the base to win
the presidency, who better to do that than Obama's unfailingly loyal No. 2?
Biden, after all, pushed the president to come out for gay marriage against
his best political instincts. He led the administration's uphill fight for
gun control
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/06/18/why-joe-biden-is-talking-about-guns/>
in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, heading its task force on the
subject. He's helped with the administration's lobbying effort for its Iran
deal
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/joe-biden-s-new-mission-selling-the-iran-deal-20150715>,
pitched wary Democrats
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/joe-biden-obama-relationship-120103.html>
on the benefits of fast-track trade, and stood by the president's side
<http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-obama-supreme-court-obamacare-decision-2015-6>
when he praised the Supreme Court's ruling upholding Obamacare subsidies.

And at a time when authenticity is a highly valued asset—for better
<http://www.salon.com/2015/04/30/lefties_meet_your_candidate_why_bernie_sanders_is_the_only_authentic_alternative_to_hillary_clinton/>
or
worse
<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-and-the-authenticity-trap-120593.html#.VbZUZLNVhBc>—Biden
boasts
the natural political skill set that Clinton clearly lacks. He's a happy
warrior who enjoys campaigning and isn't constrained by talking points or
rope lines. He's able to ham it up with union rank-and-file, while also
giving a stem-winding speech blasting Republicans in Congress. His
all-too-frequent malapropisms are endearing at a time when voters are
cynical about scripted politicians.

His drawbacks are also clear: He's getting old, hasn't prepared for a
presidential campaign, and wouldn't have the financial resources to compete
with Clinton. His presidential campaign track record (1988, 2008) is
abysmal. But his most significant liability was that he carried Obama's
political baggage at a time when the president's job approval numbers were
weak. For all the hype about Biden's ability to woo working-class voters,
the reality is that Obama's policies have been so unpopular with white
blue-collar voters that it's hard to win them back. Clinton, on the other
hand, enjoyed high favorability ratings in her post-Cabinet career (for a
while) and, on paper, boasted the ability to rally women to her side.

But Clinton has squandered so many promising opportunities that she started
with at the beginning of the campaign. Instead of distancing herself from
Obama's biggest weakness—foreign policy—she's either openly or tacitly
supported his most controversial policies (Iran nuclear deal, Cuba
outreach, strategy against ISIS). That's a tactical shift from last year,
when she gave a lengthy interview
<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/>
to *The Atlantic*'s Jeffrey Goldberg, in which she criticized Obama's
decision not to intervene in Syria and struck a hard line on Iran's nuclear
demands. With a campaign team in place, she's apparently calculated that
the risk of alienating some Obama supporters was greater than underscoring
her independence.

On domestic policy, too, her reticence to forge her own campaign path from
the president is awfully telling. Like Obama, she hasn't taken a position
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/hillary-clinton-keystone-20150727>
on construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the review she
initiated at State concluded it would cause no significant environmental
harm. She awkwardly avoided
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/how-hillary-clinton-gets-around-answering-questions-about-fast-track-20150615>
taking a position on the president's fast-track trade-authority
legislation, not wanting to alienate Obama or the party's activist base.

For Obama supporters, the case for Biden should be an easy one to make:
He's a liberal loyalist for this president who doesn't shade his views with
excessive nuance. With Biden, there wouldn't be mealy-mouthed hedging. He'd
be an unequivocal champion of the president and his agenda. And with
Obama's job approval stabilizing—it's been within one point of 46 percent
<https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/625713292628115456> in nearly
every week this year—there's a logical, if challenging, path for an
unapologetic Obama cheerleader to win the presidency.

First, however, Biden would have to win the nomination, and that's where
things get tricky. From the White House's perspective, it's probably not
worth provoking a family feud between two candidates claiming the Obama
legacy. Indeed, the White House has privately discouraged Biden from
running—"nearly every move to expand his political team was blocked by
Obama's sharp-elbowed protectors," *Politico*'s Glenn Thrush wrote in
his seminal
Biden profile
<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/joe-biden-profile-103667_Page4.html#.Vbd8dPlViko>—and
publicly offered him no support for another presidential campaign.
Clinton's email scandal would probably have to reach disastrous levels for
"no drama" Obama administration officials to panic, and for Biden to
consider jumping in the race.
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“

Concise coverage of everything I wish I had hours to read about."

Chuck, Graduate Student

This could end up being one of the administration's biggest political
miscalculations: going all in on Hillary Clinton while neglecting the
obvious appeal of the vice president. If voters really want a third term of
Obama's policies, why not back the candidate who unabashedly represents his
vision?

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

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