Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 192
November Surprises
Joe Biden said that it would be “totally legitimate” to question his age if he mounts a White House bid in 2020, CNN reports.
Said Biden: “I think it’s totally appropriate for people to look at me and say if I were to run for office again, ‘Well God darn you’re old.’”
He added: “Well, chronologically, I am old.”
“Joe Biden is heading to Nevada this weekend, appearing at the influential Culinary Workers Union as he mulls a 2020 presidential run,” Politico reports.
“The visit follows an appearance by Biden this past weekend in South Carolina, another critical early primary state. Biden, a frontrunner in early presidential polls, has been ramping up his midterm campaign appearances in recent weeks.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, in some of his harshest criticism of President Trump to date, said that the president was “trashing American values” and undermining institutions to “amass power,” the New York Times reports.
Said Biden: “He is just trashing American values the way he talks about people, the way he makes fun of people, the way he denigrates folks. I got to tell you, I think there is a method to his madness because he wants you to get down in the mosh pit with him.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden told the audience at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner that he wished he has spoken out against President Trump sooner, the New York Post reports.
Said Biden: “Barack and I agreed we would be quiet for the first year to let the new administration get up and running. God forgive me.”
“When Joe Biden speaks at the national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday night, he’ll find himself at a familiar juncture,” CNN reports.
“Speaking at the same dinner three years ago, he was grappling with a decision to make a late entrance in the 2016 presidential race mere months after the passing of his son Beau.”
“The circumstances are different this time around (it’s earlier in the process), but he is still mulling whether a third run for the White House could be the charm as he starts a campaign blitz for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden “is convinced he can beat President Trump, friends and advisers say, and he has given himself until January to deliberate and size up potential competition for the Democratic nomination,” the AP reports.
“In the meantime, Biden diligently maintains a network of supporters in key states, a group 30 years in the making, while some of those competitors are still making introductions.”
Politico: “Monday’s parade kicked off what will be an intense, nine-week stretch of campaigning for Democratic candidates in the midterms, but also an extended gut check of whether the country has an appetite for another Biden run—and for him to decide if he has the appetite to make one.”
“But here, in a part of the country that helped tip the 2016 election to Donald Trump but has since delivered Democrats their only House special election win, this is what a potential 2020 bid would look like: classic retail campaigning in parts of the country where Democrats have atrophied and which Hillary Clinton wrote off. When he was finished marching, Biden huddled with union head United Steelworkers president Leo Girard. There was even a videographer on the payroll catching every interaction, and a young man from the Republican attack group America Rising following along with his own camera, mumbling questions and then remarking with staged wonder into the camera that Biden wouldn’t answer them.”
A GOP strategist tells Roll Call that President Trump appears to “know that Joe Biden is probably the one Democrat who could beat him.”
Said the strategist: “I don’t think he wants to run against Biden. When it comes to white, educated women in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and other swing states, Trump, I think, realizes Biden would be big trouble in terms of appealing to them… He would much rather see a Warren or a Sanders, no doubt.”
“It makes me feel guilty about not wanting to run for president. But it doesn’t make me want to. I’m not looking to live in the White House, I’ve seen it up close.”
— Former Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by the Washington Post, on President Trump’s hostile behavior to U.S. allies.
Former Vice President Joe Biden “and a trusted inner circle have quietly been engaging a wider network of political allies to sketch the outlines of what a Biden 2020 candidacy might look like should he decide to run,” NBC News reports.
“Biden himself has only gone so far as to say he’s not ruled out what would be a third run for the White House. He’s also been adamant that while a decision won’t come until after the 2018 midterms, it shouldn’t linger much beyond year’s end — a timetable that would help to bring some order to what could be the largest Democratic presidential field in generations.”
Amy Chozik writes in Chasing Hillary that Vice President Joe Biden had confided — off the record — to the White House press corps that he wanted to run for president, but he added “You guys don’t understand these people. The Clintons will try to destroy me,” according to the Daily Beast.
President Trump called former Vice President Joe Biden “weak, both mentally and physically,” suggesting he could easily beat up Biden, in response to the former vice president’s comment that he would have sought to fight Trump over his remarks about women if the two were in high school together, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!”
Politico: “Between stops on his book tour and in the ramp-up for what will be a heavy midterms campaign schedule, a tight circle of aides has been brainstorming a range of tear-up-the-playbook ideas for a White House run.”
“On the list: announcing his candidacy either really early or really late in the primary process so that he’d define the field around him or let it define itself before scrambling the field; skipping Iowa and New Hampshire and going straight to South Carolina, where he has always had a strong base of support; announcing a running mate right out of the gate and possibly picking one from outside of politics; and making a pitch that he can be a bridge not just to disaffected Democrats, but to Republicans revolting against President Trump.”
“They’ve also discussed an idea some donors and supporters have been pitching Biden on directly for months: kick off by announcing that he’d only run for one term… The former vice president would pick a younger Democratic running mate and argue that he’d be the elder statesman to get the country and government back in order post-Trump and be the bridge to the next generation.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden “is tiptoeing toward a potential presidential run in 2020, even broaching the possibility during a recent gathering of longtime foreign policy aides,” the AP reports.
“He said he was keeping his 2020 options open, considering it a real possibility. He insisted he had made no decision, and didn’t need to yet, according to five people who either attended the meeting or were briefed on it by those who did.”
“Biden also expressed interest in bringing those in the room onto his team if he decides to launch a campaign. At the same time, he gave them an out: There would be no hard feelings if they decided they were content in their current roles outside of government, said the people, who demanded anonymity to discuss a private meeting.”
“A ‘draft’ campaign aimed at encouraging former Vice President Joe Biden to run for president could soon open a field office in Iowa, almost two years in advance of the 2020 Iowa caucuses,” the Des Moines Register reports.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “stopped the Obama administration from speaking out about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign by refusing to sign on to a bipartisan statement of condemnation,” Politico reports.
That moment made Biden think “the die had been cast … this was all about the political play.”
“Biden said he and former President Obama worried that without a united front of bipartisanship, speaking out before the election would undermine the legitimacy of the election and American institutions in a way that would play into the Russians’ larger ambitions.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden “says he’s uncertain about a run for president in 2020, but he indicates he’s looking for fresh blood to lead the Democratic Party,” the AP reports.
Said Biden: “I’m just not sure it’s the appropriate thing for me to do.”
He added: “We gotta turn this ship around… I’d much prefer to be helping someone turn it around than being the guy trying to turn it around.”
Former DNC head Donna Brazile “writes in a new book that she seriously contemplated replacing Hillary Clinton as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee with then-Vice President Biden in the aftermath of Clinton’s fainting spell, in part because Clinton’s campaign was ‘anemic’ and had taken on ‘the odor of failure,'” the Washington Post reports.
“In an explosive new memoir, Brazile details widespread dysfunction and dissension throughout the Democratic Party, including secret deliberations over using her powers as interim DNC chair to initiate the removal of Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) from the ticket after Clinton’s Sept. 11, 2016, collapse in New York City.”
“Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. “
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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