Joe Biden entered the 2020 presidential campaign cycle in late April to the relief of Democrats concerned that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont could very well be their nominee.
Biden immediately eclipsed his opponents as the front-runner with a 20-point lead ahead of his nearest opponent, Sanders, but recent remarks made to donors and to press seem antithetical to a front-runner confident he can pull out a win.
In a New York Times Magazine interview published Tuesday, Biden was asked if he thought he could have beaten Trump in 2016. “I don’t know,” he said. “Everybody says that. But look, I don’t know. You’ve got to be in the game. I thought Hillary would have made a good president.”
He later responded to the possibility of losing the 2020 election saying, “Everybody said, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be awful if you lost?’ I know what loss is, man. Losing the race is not loss in the same sense.”
The Delaware Democrat, who lost both his first wife and one-year-old daughter in a car accident in 1972, later saw his son Beau Biden die brain cancer in 2015. Joe was first elected to serve in the Senate in 1972 and went on to run for the White House in 1988, attempting at age 46 to become the youngest president since John F. Kennedy.
Biden’s latest run for the presidency is his third White House bid, after a 2008 effort that fizzled out after the Iowa Caucuses. And while Biden routinely tells his own contributors he decided to enter the race after the 2017 events involving white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia and President Trump’s reaction to it, his uncertainty about his chances made their way into some of his remarks at one fundraiser in Bel Air, California on July 18.
“Everyone knows who Donald Trump is. No one has ever accused him of being a man of character,” Biden said. “We have to let them know who we are, what we stand for. We choose science over fiction, we choose truth over lies, we choose hope over fear.”
At this point Biden stated, “Whoever gets the nomination, I will break my neck to make sure they get elected because we cannot afford four more years. If I get the nomination, I promise you, I promise you I will know how to do the job.”
Biden told the Times Magazine that prior to entering the 2020 race, he had a responsibility to help take care of Beau’s two children, which factored in to his decision on whether he would run for the White House again.
“The family was fragile after Beau passing away,” Biden explained. By December, he decided he would run for the White House but doubts reportedly lingered because of the brutal campaign cycle he knew he and his family would end up enduring.
Since entering the race back in April, Biden’s lead in the first primary/caucus states has dropped to just 5 points from his closest competitors. Moreover, Biden is suffering from an enthusiasm gap. Just one month after his campaign launch, Biden’s team blew off concerns about the size of the crowds attending his campaign rallies. On May 19 at his official launch rally in Philadelphia, the crowd size was reportedly smaller than an average Trump rally, drawing only around 6,000 attendees.
The Atlantic asked Biden adviser Ted Kaufman if there was concern about the crowd size and if that may reflect a lack of enthusiasm for the campaign.
“If you’re saying that, you’re totally not focused on what’s going on here,” replied Kaufman, who filled out nearly two years of Biden’s Senate term in 2009-10. Kaufman later pointed to former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke as an example of a candidate for office who drew large crowds but lost the election, when he ran for Senate in 2008 against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
However, nine days later Biden’s front-runner status was questioned by critics when his Democrat primary opponents began to draw larger crowds at their campaign rallies than he could.
“I started to think the polls were wrong about Biden because it’s not what we’re seeing on the ground,” said Aimee Allison, founder and president of She the People told Politico.
The former vice president’s media mentions have also taken hit. According to fivethirtyeight.com, both his online and television media mentions have dropped precipitously.
Hoping to shore up Democrat base voters, Biden rolled out his criminal justice reform plan on Tuesday and is expected to address attendees at the NAACP presidential candidates forum on Wednesday in Detroit, Michigan.
