Why I’m Not Ridin’ With Biden

MICHAEL TOMASKY, DAILY BEAST

Several weeks before Maureen Dowd was feeding us dialogue from Beau Biden’s deathbed, the chief promoter of a Joe Biden presidential candidacy was a fellow named Dick Harpootlian, the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Here, for example, is a U.S. News piece from back in June, when Harpootlian was acting as a one-man p.r. machine for Biden. “I think he was seriously considering it, but he was seriously distracted by Beau being in Walter Reed,” Harpootlian is quoted as saying in that article. “I haven’t heard anything to convince me to say that it wasn't still something he was thinking about.”

Is Harpootlian driven by some quasi-mythic faith in la forza del Joe’s destino? Maybe. But the record sure appears to reflect that he is also driven by an intense dislike of the Clintons. During the heated 2008 South Carolina primary, Harpootlian compared Bill Clinton to Lee Atwater. Now, that primary was far from Bill Clinton’s finest hour. But Lee Atwater he ain’t. Looks like there’s a history there—a history Democrats ought to be aware before the former chairman of a state where the Democratic Party has lost nearly everything it was mathematically possible to lose in the last generation becomes a major national power broker.

Like most liberals, I like Joe Biden fine. He’s mostly stood for good things over the years. Although it should be asked—and will, if he enters the race, especially against a woman—what percent of the responsibility he bears for the fact that Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court. This is the story of Angela Wright,  the former Thomas employee who had tales that corroborated Anita Hill’s testimony but by bipartisan agreement (Biden chaired the Judiciary Committee at the time) was not allowed to testify. She spent a weekend in an Arlington motel waiting to be called, but never was. You might be hearing more about her.

Wait, I digress. What I meant to say was, generally, I like Biden fine and think he’s been a steady and admirable public servant, and I’m at a loss for words over the personal grief he’s endured. I don’t mind the famous malapropisms, for the most part; God knows Washington could use more people who depart from script on occasion.

It’s no mystery why some Democrats are nervous about Hillary Clinton. But if they’re thinking that Biden is some kind of white knight who can ride in and sort everything out, I would suggest they’re mistaken. Biden has sought the presidency twice before. In 1988, he didn’t even make it out of the starting blocks. Indeed he didn’t even make it to 1988, because the revelation that he was cribbing autobiographical speech lines from British Labour leader Neil Kinnock chased him from the race in 1987.

That’s not a track record that screams white knight to me. And every Democratic insider surely knows this. So what’s going on here? It seems clear that a little Clinton panic is going on, based on that one Quinnipiac poll that showed her losing to some Republicans in key states, and on the continuing Times jihad over her emails.

There are ways in which this is silly. That July 22 Q-poll looks increasingly aberrant, as legitimate polls have come out since showing Clinton with the same kind of 5- to 7-point leads over the first-tier Republicans that she’s had for a year. As for the email story, that’s a little less silly, as a political concern. No one has yet adduced any proof that Clinton did anything wrong, but that doesn’t mean the Republicans aren’t going to spend the next 15 months trying to suggest otherwise, and the proof-less suggestions have obviously done Clinton some damage in the last month. But panic? It seems a touch early for that.

The other point made in Biden’s favor is the old “personal affect-slash-authenticity” argument—that he displays a certain exuberance on the trail, while she is, to use a word I saw in the Times yesterday sourced to a “prominent Democratic party official” who may or may not be named Harpootlian, “joyless.”

Believe me, as the guy who wrote a book about her 2000 campaign, which I see you can now literally (to use a favorite Biden word) buy for as little as one penny (!), I’ve probably written as many “If only Hillary could loosen up” sentences as any journalist in America. But I have recognized, too, the sexism so clearly coded in the way many people say it. For God’s sakes, Jeb Bush on the trail makes Clinton look like Sarah Silverman. But you don’t see many “Who Is Jeb, Really?” stories. Men just aren’t written about in that way.

Anybody who has the means to run for president and wants to run ought to run. If Biden does get in and she beats him, well, that’s one less woulda-shoulda-coulda hypothetical that will loom over Clinton. If he gets in and wins, well, he’ll have earned it because by definition, the nominee is the person who earns it. But there’s no reason to think Biden is some kind of rescuer. He’s had two shots at this and has flamed out both times, and there must be a reason for that.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, WASHINGTON POST

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Rather than try to understand what Biden will ultimately do, I asked a handful of unaligned Democratic strategists where he might fit into the race if he did run. And, their opinions, much like my own, were that there's not a whole lot of room for the vice president in the race.

"The Democratic primary audience isn’t pining for something different," said one Democratic consultant granted anonymity to candidly assess the prospects of the vice president. "You have your Elizabeth Warren crowd that is currently gravitating to Bernie Sanders.  Joe Biden can’t capture any of that crowd. And Hillary has great passion from the African-American, young, and female base.  Joe Biden does not mean anything to those individuals."

That idea, that Biden simply lacks any real niche in the race, came up in every conversation I had today about his prospects. Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker summed up Biden's problem nicely in a tweet over the weekend.

Ryan Lizza @RyanLizza
What is the case for Biden over HRC?

Youth?❌
Gender?❌
Broad party support?❌
Lefty cred?❌
Money?❌
Superior campaigner?❌

Makes no sense.
10:32 AM - 2 Aug 2015
   98 98 Retweets  96 96 favorites

The only issue I would take with Ryan's assessment is that I believe Biden is a superior campaigner when compared to Clinton.  While Biden absolutely has had his ups and downs on the campaign trail -- "clean, articulate", for one -- he has a charisma and magnetism that she, at least based on her 2008 campaign and the start of this race, lacks.

But, Biden isn't THAT much more charismatic than Clinton that he lean on it to make up for all the very good points Ryan (and the strategists I talked to) made about his sameness with Clinton. Elections are about choices, and it's hard to see how Biden represents a clear break from Clinton.  Sanders or even Jim Webb are a far starker contrast to the former Secretary of State.

Then there is the fact that Biden (still) isn't expected to make a decision about the race until the end of the summer. Clinton formally announced her candidacy on April 12 and in the time between then and June 30 raised $45 million for her campaign committee -- not to mention the hundreds of staffers in both her national headquarters and in states like Iowa and New Hampshire that have been up and running for months too.

"I think Biden faces a tough challenge that any candidate would face at this relatively late stage of the campaign," said one Democratic consultant. "Granted, he would have an advantage over others in terms of name ID and organization.  But for practical purposes, he is probably too late."

The best/only explanation the Democrats I talked offered for a Biden candidacy was predicated on a massive collapse by Clinton. "Biden is a default position if Hillary implodes," said one senior party operative. "A safe candidate for those that fear Sanders is too liberal to win."

Maybe. But does a man who spent decades in the Senate and the last eight years as the second most powerful politician in the country really want to base an entire presidential campaign on the off chance that the frontrunner screws up so badly that he can fill the void she creates?  Joe Biden is many things and proud is one of them; I have a hard time imagining that he'd run on the hope that Clinton trips.

One last thing to remember: Joe Biden is still Joe Biden. As in, once he became an official candidate the problems he experienced as a presidential candidate (in 1987 and 2008) as well during his time as vice president wouldn't suddenly disappear. Biden would probably still overshare and say things he shouldn't.  Those statements would lead to speculation about whether he was up to the top job. And so on and so forth.

The idea of Biden for president is to many an appealing albeit heart-wrenching storyline: The man who ran for president to fulfill the dying wish of his son. But, once the initial glow of that story wore off, it's hard to see how and where Biden would fit into the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee. That doesn't mean he won't run. It does mean though that the idea he would immediately (or ever) be competitive with Clinton looks far-fetched.

2016: THIS MOST PECULIAR ELECTION

ELIZABETH DREW, N.Y. REVIEW OF BOOKS

Hillary 2016 Brings Back Boomer Clinton Rage

MICHAEL TOMASKY DAILY BEAST

I’m quite looking forward to Hillary Clinton being president of the United States. I think she will probably run, I think she will probably win, [May the Fates allow it--Esco]  and I think she’ll be at least a good and maybe a great president. What I’m not particularly looking forward to is the process by which she’ll have to get there. Just in the past few days here, Maureen Dowd and Richard Cohen have laid before us in the form of two recent and silly columns little reminders of the prejudice against Clinton within a certain slice of the liberal chattering class, a prejudice that will swell predictably as she passes the various posts that stand between her and the nomination and, finally, election. Fortunately, these chatterers are less and less relevant every election. Clinton should welcome their animus. It can only help her.

I have observed many strange things in my years of tilling these fields, but surely nothing stranger than the way the arbiters of conventional wisdom in America have viewed the Clintons. It’s a deep and weird Baby Boomer psychodrama that I can summarize as follows: when the Clintons first hit the national scene, they were doing so at the same time that strivers of their generation were starting to displace the old graybeards in the news business. Tim Russert took over Meet the Press in 1991. Dowd got her column in 1995. The ’60s generation was taking over. Things were going to be different. Here was a cohort, after all, that grew up thinking that it could, and would, change the world. And now one of their own was president! We would witness the dawn of a new era of authenticity, to use a big ’60s word, and the Clintons would lead it.

Soon enough, though, the Boomer generation turned out to be no more authentic than any other—indeed quite less authentic, or at least less admirable, than the greatest generation, whom Tom Brokaw limned between hard covers the same year the world learned the name Monica Lewinsky. Though the Boomer journalists began to turn on the Clintons before the Lewinsky scandal, that really sealed it. Obviously, there were good reasons for any human being to consider what Bill Clinton did there to be unacceptable. But there was a self-regarding quality to many Boomer journalists’ scribblings (and on-air musings—the cable nets were taking off around this time) about the whole mess, as if the Clintons had somehow done this to them. Chris Matthews—oh, if you could have heard him in those days going on and on and on about the Clintons, and about Al Gore too (Matthews has even said that he voted for George W. Bush in 2000).

I served my time inside the walls of this abattoir as Hillary first sought her New York Senate seat in 1999 and 2000, a race I covered closely. My God, the hatred of Hillary one heard then! Especially among white Boomer women. At one event in early 2000, I ran into the journalist Jim Traub. We were chatting about this matter, and he said he’d spoken to a shrink friend of his who was aghast at the number of women who were plopping themselves down on his couch and—well, as Jim said to me: “Can you imagine, these women spending $165 an hour to talk about Hillary?”

That was then. Ever since, Clinton has of course served a very successful stint as a senator from New York, successful enough that when she sought reelection in 2006, the Republicans had no one of importance to run against her. (I remember well their blood vows to make sure she was a one-termer.) She then became the secretary of State, and an excellent one, forging major diplomatic breakthroughs with Russia (since rescinded by Putin, not her fault) and other triumphs like the Libya coalition. In between, she ran a not-very-good presidential campaign, it is true. But there’s very little room to doubt the proposition that someone who has been both a senator and a secretary of State, and has to boot lived in the White House for eight years and seen daily what it’s like to have that job, is amply prepared to be the president, and is not remotely the same person she was in 1999.

The world has moved on from those tremulous Boomer anxieties. Well, most of the world has. But Dowd and Cohen are here to remind us that the knives will once again be unsheathed. Dowd’s column was notable only for the fact that she found the flimsiest pretense possible for printing the name Gennifer Flowers, and Cohen is in a lather because Clinton doesn’t have a message yet (of course, if she did, he’d be writing about how having one so early openly showed Clinton’s breathtaking chutzpah). Of Matthews, though, we must say that he has moved on: he has understood, to his great credit, from very early on how lunatic and dangerous today’s Republican Party has become, and he’s changed his tune accordingly.

Matthews’s change is important. Back in the 1990s, there seemed to many people to be little truly at stake in our politics. The Cold War was won. The parties disagreed, of course, and money was rotting the system, yes. But the corrosive effects of both polarization and legal corruption were nothing compared to today. And one of our two major parties hadn’t yet lost its collective mind. This was the historical era when many center-liberals decided it was cooler to bash liberalism than conservatism—when Slate was born, for example, specializing as it did (and still does a bit, but not nearly as much) in producing the “counter-intuitive” “liberal” take on something like why Charles Murray might be right about IQ after all.

That era is pretty close to dead, thankfully. But in a certain kind of pundit, Hillary Clinton will always inspire the same kind of reaction she did two decades ago. It will make for tedious reading, but it will end up helping Clinton, this superficial japery, because the rest of the country understands that the stakes are too high now, and any journalism that doesn’t sink its teeth into that problem will just look silly. And the curse of the Boomer psychodrama about the Clintons will be canceled for lack of interest.