Subject: Re: Balz: As Biden weighs a 2016 campaign, does he want to be the anti-Clinton?
From: <[email-masked]>
To: "Steve Richetti" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Acdonilon" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2015 17:46:48 +0000 (UTC)

I agree. An excellent objective presen=ation of the situation.

Sent from Xfinity Connect Mobile App=blockquote>
------ Original Message ------

From: Alex Sny=er-Mackler
To: Steve Richetti, Mike Donilon, ted kaufman, Hunter=Biden
Sent: August 15, 2015 at 11:48 AM
Subject: Balz:=As Biden weighs a 2016 campaign, does he want to be the anti-Clinton?

As usual, Dan has a pretty solid, fair= unemotional assessment of the lay of the land. This will be in print in t=morrow (Sunday) WashPost.

Biden can find reasons to think he shou=d run. He is an accomplished
public servant. He is a politician with 36 years of experience in the
Senate. He served as chairman of both the Foreign Relations and
Judiciary committees. He has been one of the most active vice presidents
in history.

As he looks at Hillary Rodham Clinton,=20
is there any doubt that he wonders why so many Democrats have tried to
smooth her path to the nomination while seeming to ignore him? Does she
have longer experience, more authenticity, a firmer connection to the
middle class? He has long been an advocate for the struggling middle
class, and unlike Clinton, he has not become fabulously wealthy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-biden-=eighs-a-2016-campaign-does-he-want-to-be-the-anti-clinton/2015/08/15/01a58=d2-42cb-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html

As=Biden weighs a 2016 campaign, does he want to be the anti-Clinton?
=
By Dan Balz August 15 at 10:57 AM

By
many accounts, Vice President Biden has spent his vacation week mulling
whether to run for president — again. The decision will test head an=
heart and involve no small amount of emotion.

Tracking the story
of is-he-or-isn’t-he-going-to-run is akin to chasing smoke, even to=20
those who are loyal friends. Few people beyond his family are privy to
his real thinking. Some Democrats say his advisers are making calls.
Everyone looks for evidence of active pursuit of a campaign. Friends say
they don’t yet sense a real campaign-in-the-making, and they doubt=20
there ever will be. But they hedge.

Joe Biden has run for
president twice without success, but almost three decades after his
first campaign, the embers of ambition continue to glow. There was a
time a few years ago when he might have willingly set aside those
personal ambitions, if only because he could believe that his son Beau, a
talented politician in his own right, would one day run for and perhaps
be elected president.

Beau Biden’s tragic death a few months=20
ago robbed the vice president of that hope. It is now left to the father
to decide whether to do what his son reportedly urged him to do — to=20
run once more. The death of Beau Biden also has prolonged the
decision-making process about another campaign. It’s understandable t=at
the vice president has not yet said “no” to a campaign in 2016= He is
being tugged in different directions.

Biden can find reasons to
think he should run. He is an accomplished public servant. He is a
politician with 36 years of experience in the Senate. He served as
chairman of both the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees. He has
been one of the most active vice presidents in history.

As
he looks at Hillary Rodham Clinton, is there any doubt that he wonders
why so many Democrats have tried to smooth her path to the nomination
while seeming to ignore him? Does she have longer experience, more
authenticity, a firmer connection to the middle class? He has long been
an advocate for the struggling middle class, and unlike Clinton, he has
not become fabulously wealthy.

Like
any politician, he has flaws. His judgments would be examined and
scrutinized. His penchant for verbal miscues would come roaring back.
Some have been maladroit enough that he has been forced to issue a
retraction or apology. Others were less cringe-worthy but still notable.
All would be fair game.

But
if he has long been a punch line for late-night comedians, he also has
developed a reputation for decency and an air of authenticity at a time
when that quality is prized, even sought after. Now he also has the
sympathy of friends and adversaries alike because of the tragedy of his
son’s death.

Biden is well-liked and enjoys great good will. I=
Iowa, for example, he has many friends and admirers dating back to his
first campaign in the 1988 cycle, a campaign that ended in 1987 after a
scandal involving plagiarism. That good will was evident there when he
ran the last time, in 2008. On the eve of the caucuses that year, his
advisers were certain that he was developing real momentum. When the
final numbers were allocated, he was at 1 percent. The lesson: Good wi=l
does not translate to political support.

It is said that he can
wait a bit longer to make a decision because he has been through
campaigns before and would be able to assemble a network of political
and financial support more quickly than a novice candidate. But look at
what he would be going up against.

Biden has not been a
prodigious fundraiser. When he ran the last time, he raised about
$11 million in all of 2007 and about $13 million in total. In thi=
campaign, Clinton raised $4 million during her first three months as a=20
candidate. She is likely on her way to $100 million by this fall. That=rsquo;s
not money in a super PAC, but hard dollars raised in maximum donations
of $2,700. The math for Biden is daunting.

So, too, is
the prospect of assembling a campaign. Presidential campaigns are
significantly larger and more complex than they were even just eight
years ago. Obama’s 2008 campaign helped to pioneer the modern model.=20
Biden’s was anything but that eight years ago.

To put togethe= all the pieces needed in an era of social media and digital commun=cation and prodigious amounts of data and tens of thousands =f volunteers is laborious and time-consuming.

What
would be Biden’s reason for deciding to run at this point? That&rsqu=;s a
more difficult question for him to answer. His policy differences with
Clinton are not obvious. He cannot claim to be the idol of the
progressive wing of the party, in the way that Bernie Sanders has
become. He and Clinton owe allegiances to President Obama and to the
policies of the administration. Even more than Clinton, he has been a
partner of the president.

“Biden, Gore buzz hound Clinton
campaign,” read a line on CNN on Friday afternoon, referring to talk=20
that both the current vice president and former vice president Al Gore
were weighing whether to run.

A Gore spokeswoman told Politico
that there was “no truth” to the speculation about her boss. Bu= the
climate that produces such talk is real: The notion, fair or not, that
Clinton is increasingly vulnerable has Democrats increasingly worried.
=p>Biden
would want his candidacy to be seen on its own merits. Given the
current state of play — Clinton’s declining trust numbers, the=20
investigation into her private e-mail account and expressions of concern
among Democrats about her vulnerabilities, along with Sanders’s rise=in
the polls — that would be impossible.

A Biden campaign would=20
quickly be cast as one that embodies a lack of confidence in Clinton, an
anti-Hillary venture from the start. She would take seriously the
challenge and deal with it, if Biden developed momentum — vigorously =nd
directly. One or both would be damaged in the process.

No one on
the outside knows what Biden will decide. Not many on the outside
believe that in the end he will say “yes,” although they do not=rule it
out. If he doesn’t run, he will leave office in January of 2017, at a=e
74, with an enviable record of public service capped by eight years as a
consequential vice president — but with his dream of being president=20
unfulfilled. That means to say “no” this time comes with a sens= of
finality that did not exist in the past. No wonder the vice president is
still mulling.

--

Alexander =nyder Mackler
(302) 598-8678