Subject: Re: Where Joe Biden Is Coming From - Bloomberg Politics
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2015 20:28:35 -0400

I don't think so.  At least not publicly or officially.  They still don't
think he's going to do it or hope not so they don't want to escalate yet.
But maybe that's wishful thinking.

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 3, 2015, at 8:11 PM, Alexander S. Mackler <[email-masked]>
wrote:

I give it 48 hours until the Clintons start focusing their fire on us. They
can only stomach so much of this.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 3, 2015, at 5:10 PM, Eric Schwerin <[email-masked]>
wrote:

John Heilmann….

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/

Where Joe Biden Is Coming From

Three years ago, in mid-August 2012, I spent several days in close
quarters with Joe Biden for a magazine profile
<http://nymag.com/news/features/joe-biden-2012-9/> I was writing. In
an interview in his cabin aboard Air Force Two, I asked Biden about a
topic much discussed back then, and even more so—to put it mildly—at this
moment: the possibility that he might run for president in 2016.

“I give you my word as a Biden—a serious answer,” he said. “If the
Lord Almighty came down and sat at that coffee table and said, ‘I
guarantee you’re the nominee if you say yes now,’ I wouldn’t say yes now.
Because I don’t know what the hell four years from now, three years from
now, is gonna be like. But I know one thing: I have no intention, if I feel
as good and have the same mind-set I have today, of my just saying, ‘Well,
you know, I put my years in, and I am proud of what I did. And now, you
know, I’m going to play a lot more golf.’”

One person who adamantly wanted Biden to take the plunge (again) was
his beloved eldest son, Beau. He told me so at the time, and as the world
now knows, Beau was urging
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-joe-biden-in-2016-what-would-beau-do.html?_r=0>,
even imploring, his father to challenge Hillary Clinton right up until his
death in May.

An argument could be made that Biden is, in fact, a superior campaigner to
Clinton—or at least a more joyful and authentic one.

For Joe Biden, Beau’s long, valiant, futile struggle with brain
cancer hammered home in brutal fashion the truth of the vice
president’s observation about the unknowability of the future. Beau’s plea
has had a profound effect
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/will-he-run-biden-speculation-mounts-1435529527>
on his father’s thinking—and, always as important when it comes to Joe
Biden, his feeling—about the decision before him. That his younger son,
Hunter, holds the same view as his late brother matters greatly to Biden,
too. (Where his wife, Jill, stands remains a mystery even to family
friends.) But equally significant, according to several people close to
Biden, is his mounting sense of dismay about the Clintons: over their
controversial politico-philanthropic endeavors, their enthusiastic
money-making activities, and their *le parti est la nôtre, nous sommes le
parti* sense of entitlement.

Set against Biden’s emotion-laden impulses are the stark
electoral realities that would make taking on Clinton a terrifically
daunting endeavor. The* New Yorke*r’s Ryan Lizza summed up the hurdles with
this: <https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/627849460358340608>

An argument could be made that Biden is, in fact, a superior campaigner
to Clinton—or at least a more joyful and authentic one. By some measures,
his standing with the electorate is stronger, too. In a Quinnipiac
University national poll
<http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2264>
released late last week, Biden’s favorable/unfavorable and
honest/trustworthy numbers were considerably better than Clinton’s. And
while her ratings by such metrics have been gradually worsening, Biden’s
have been steadily improving; his favorability score is now the
healthiest it has been since shortly after Election Day 2008, according to
Quinnipiac.

The Clintons and their adjutants have always understood that a
Biden challenge was possible. In the long run, they believe, their
candidate—with her financial and organizational advantages, her head start,
the official backing of wide swaths of the Democratic caucuses in the House
and Senate, and her strength with virtually every demographic group that
matters in her party’s nominating electorate—would withstand it. But they
also comprehend, if dimly, that in the short term a Biden entry would make
their lives sheer hell, and in the medium term could be quite dangerous,
for three reasons beyond the obvious.
Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton speaks to the media about her private e-mail server on
March 10, 2015, in New York City.

First, it would radically exacerbate an already punishing set of
media dynamics for Clinton. Whereas everything she does is viewed by much
of the press corps through a prism of suspicion and cynicism, Biden is seen
through precisely the opposite sort of lens. Between his underdog status,
warm relationships with countless national reporters and pundits, and
the irresistible narrative of a father running to fulfill his
cancer-stricken son’s deathbed wish, the vice president would be all but
guaranteed many weeks, if not months, of soft, forgiving, at times gushing
coverage.

Second, a Biden candidacy would escalate the Bernie Sanders threat. In
terms of their ideological moorings and policy stances, not much separates
Clinton and Biden. They are basically mainstream liberals, and would find
themselves competing for the same mainstream liberal votes. But it is
possible, indeed likely, that Sanders’s further-left base of support would
remain unmolested by a Biden candidacy. Could Sanders beat Clinton (or for
that matter, Biden) head-to-head in Iowa, New Hampshire, or both? Maybe,
maybe not. But his chances of doing so in a three-way contest would
increase appreciably.

Third, with Biden in the race, the Democratic establishment would have
a viable alternative. The absence of a plausible fallback option has been
no small part of the reason the party’s panjandrums have been laboring
to suppress their misgivings about the swirl of controversies around
Clinton’s e-mail practices and her family’s foundation. The mere presence
of Biden in the mix would free those anxieties to float closer to
the surface—perhaps even to bubble over. Remember, even in the absence of
any scandal, the establishment’s supposedly rock-solid loyalty to the
Clintons crumbled quickly in 2008 with the rise of Barack Obama. Biden is
no Obama, but the atmosphere around Clinton today is far more toxic than it
was then. If the roof above her seems to be caving in, the establishment
will want an exit. Biden would offer one.

Of course, for all of the talk of the past 48 hours, it’s conceivable, and
even likely, that Biden will forego a run. He is keenly aware of the
obstacles he would face in, and relative liabilities he would bring to, a
campaign—and has long been reluctant to conclude his career in public life
by being the damn fool who placed himself in the path of an oncoming train.
His darkening assessment of the Clintons only makes the prospect of losing
to her, to them, that much more unappetizing.

On the other hand, it would make winning all the sweeter. The emergence in
the press of the details of his conversations with Beau and
deliberations about launching a bid was obviously not an accident. It was a
purpose pitch aimed directly at the Clintons from within his innermost
circle. One of Biden's favorite sayings is, “You're either on the way up or
on your way down.” Whatever he finally decides, it's clear that Biden isn't
ready to concede that he's on his way down just yet.

Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Suite 705
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 333-1880
[email-masked] <x-msg://59/[email-masked]>
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