Subject: Joe Biden 2016: Draft Biden group circulates pro-Joe memo to DNC members - POLITICO
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 19:32:17 -0400

> http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/draft-biden-group-pro-joe-memo-dnc-members-121682.html?hp=rc1_4 <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/draft-biden-group-pro-joe-memo-dnc-members-121682.html?hp=rc1_4>
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> Draft Biden group circulates pro-Joe memo to DNC members
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> AP Photo
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> Draft Biden group circulates pro-Joe memo to DNC members
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> By Annie Karni <http://www.politico.com/reporters/AnnieKarni.html>
> 8/24/15 5:31 PM EDT
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> Updated 8/24/15 7:19 PM EDT
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> Ahead of the Democratic National Committee summer meeting in Minneapolis later this week, the Draft Biden campaign is circulating a memo to DNC members and party leaders, asking them to keep an open mind about a possible presidential run for Joe Biden.
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> In the two-page memo, titled, “The Case for Joe Biden,” a senior adviser to the group, Josh Alcorn, writes, “Our ask for you today is not financial: we are asking you to keep an open mind and consider a Biden candidacy. Our country, the Democratic Party, and yes, the Vice President deserves nothing less. The more you consider it, the more sense it makes.”
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> The letter was sent five days before all five declared Democratic presidential candidates are set to make their case to party leaders and superdelegates at the DNC gathering. Hillary Clinton is speaking at the meeting on Friday before heading back to the Hamptons, where she has been vacationing and attending fundraisers. Biden is not scheduled to attend the meeting.
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> Clinton supporters stressed the importance of the audience for the Democratic front-runner, who in 2008 won the popular vote <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html> but did not win enough delegates to win her party’s nomination.
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> The memo from the Draft Biden group to DNC members makes no explicit reference to the email controversy that is dogging Clinton and helping to create an opening for a Biden run. But it warns them that it is too early to get behind a presumed nominee.
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> “It’s important to remind ourselves of how conventional wisdom and early polling leaders in past primaries have fallen short,” the Draft Biden memo states. “It is way too early to bet on 2016 polls. In the late summer/early fall of 2003 and 2007, party activists were still being courted and the eventual nominee was not leading in the polls.”
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> The letter also argues that Biden shares the same characteristics that have helped to rally huge crowds and support for Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Americans are looking for a president who tells it like it is,” the memo states. “Everyone knows Joe Biden’s straightforward style and authentic approach to politics. But combine those likable qualities with a heavyweight resume – decades in the United States Senate and six and a half years executive experience in the White House – and the case for Joe Biden is clear as day.”
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> Alcorn, the former chief of staff to Joe Biden’s late son Beau, notes in the memo that since 2000, caucus and primary-goers have never coronated an “inevitable nominee in the year before those contests take place.” And it points to the fact that in 2007, the polls “made then-Senator Hillary Clinton look like a sure thing for the 2008 Democratic nomination.”
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> The memo also attempts to address questions of how Biden would build the campaign infrastructure necessary for a serious run.
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> “Draft Biden 2016 has already assembled a who’s who of staff talent focusing on deft media strategy, aggressive fundraising, innovative digital outreach, and a dynamic field operation that aims to be up and running in all 50 states by September,” the memo says.
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> In reality, the Draft Biden movement began as a ragtag group of junior operatives working out of a collective office space in downtown Chicago. But in the past 10 days, it has begun to attract some seasoned political operatives to its cause. When Alcorn signed on, it also lent the group the patina of a Biden-family blessed enterprise.
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> In reality, the Draft Biden movement is made up of a ragtag group of junior operatives working out of a collective office space in downtown Chicago.
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> To some recipients, it showed “a lot of assertions without anything backing them up,” said one DNC meeting attendee after reading the letter. “If this is the way his campaign would be run, then he shouldn’t enter the race.”
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> A Draft Biden spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
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Eric D. Schwerin
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