Joe Biden’s two days of off-message musings about his long-ago work with some of the most notorious segregationists of their era has staffers calling for an intervention to save his 2020 presidential campaign.
The former vice president’s reminiscences about collaborating on legislation with Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia has campaign veterans wondering whether he has what it takes to win the right to challenge President Trump in 2020.
While he is viewed as the front-runner and leads by 16.9% in the RealClearPolitics polls average, his own staff views him as intensely vulnerable — not least to himself.
Biden’s light schedule, off-the-cuff ramblings, lateness to important events, and seeming inability to heed the advice of his aides create an impression of a directionless campaign.
Just below the surface are fears of another campaign crash like Biden’s first presidential effort, for the 1988 nomination, which ended amid plagiarism charges and a wave of unflattering stories. Twenty years later Biden didn’t even make it past the Iowa caucus, finishing with under 1%, behind not just Democratic stars such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton but also John Edwards and Bill Richardson.
A Biden staffer told the Washington Examiner the candidate lacks senior figures inside his campaign who have the authority to tell him what to do. Former Obama administration national security adviser Thomas Donilon, Biden’s longtime Senate chief of staff Ted Kaufman, and lobbyist Steve Ricchetti have all worked with and known Biden for decades.
While all offer external advice, the staffer said the campaign lacked a powerful figure on the inside. Instead Biden, 76, has hired Obama veterans, such as Greg Schultz, his campaign manager, and Kate Bedingfield, communications director, who are almost four decades younger than him.
Democratic strategists fret that his Philadelphia-based campaign lacks coherence.
Uncertainty about Biden’s position in the race extends to Obama alumni as well, with one former 2012 campaign official telling the Washington Examiner that “someone needs to get to Biden and make a real attempt to change the man.”
“Someone needs to give him an intervention,” the source said. “I have vivid memories of 2008,” when Biden ended up fourth in the Iowa caucuses and quickly dropped out of that year’s Democratic primary. “It’s like a time travel machine.”
Party pros and alum from the administration of Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama, are also watching warily.
“There are definitely knives out for Biden among the Democratic National Committee and those who worked in the Obama White House,” added the source.
When he’s been on the road, Biden’s team has tried disciplining a candidate confidently embarking on his third presidential run. Despite these efforts, Biden recently turned up an hour late for a 9 a.m. diner visit in Manchester, N.H., escorted by Lou D’Allesandro, a state senator and local Democratic kingmaker. The former vice president was busy finishing up watching that day’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, according to a staffer on his campaign.
“Ultimately the candidate is making the decisions. You got all these advisers, but Biden is the one who is calling the shots on strategy,” Democratic strategist Jeff Hewitt, who has consulted for Democratic campaigns throughout the country, told the Washington Examiner. “When I look at the Biden campaign, I see an old-school strategy. Whether that’s because of his age, I don’t know.”
Biden’s missteps have been all the more conspicuous due to his startlingly light campaign schedule. He’s held less than half as many public campaign events as rivals such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Earlier this month, over a 24-hour period, Biden reversed his longstanding support of the Hyde Amendment, a rule enacted by Congress and the president annually since 1976 that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.
But even that effort was bungled. According to a Biden staffer who spoke with the Washington Examiner, his campaign had loaded a seven-minute-long apology on not initially supporting federal funding for abortions into a teleprompter, but the candidate declined to read it.
Instead, Biden offered brief remarks at a Democratic National Committee gala dinner in Atlanta a day after he told staffers to reiterate his support for the provision.
“Just getting across the finish line is Biden’s strategy. Someone like Biden is taking time between events because he needs political healing time after gaffes like the Hyde Amendment [flip-flop],” South Carolina-based Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said. “Everyone is moving at rapid speed, but Biden’s people are doing this at their speed. You want to be methodical and strategic.”
In some ways, Biden’s long experience on the presidential campaign trail could end up damaging his candidacy. While he’s more than familiar with the key venues and diners in early primary states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, his self-assured, even entitled attitude has frustrated staffers who find their suggestions overruled.
“My impression is that Biden looked at the Democratic field and expected his competitors to be scrapping at each other and not aiming their fire at him. He thought all these other candidates were auditioning for vice president,” Sam Waltz, a Delaware-based political consultant who has known the Bidens for 40 years, told the Washington Examiner. “The difficult thing is that Joe hasn’t accounted for a new generation.”
Biden’s struggle to adjust to a new Democratic Party was most apparent this week when he refused to apologize for remarks praising the work he got done with segregationist senators, after being first called out by a 2020 Democratic rival, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.
“Cory should apologize,” Biden said. “He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body; I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career. Period. Period. Period.”
That response was followed by news that veteran Democratic strategist Mark Putnam recently departed Biden’s campaign, although circumstances were murky.
Biden had been warned by advisers not to mention his work with former Democratic senators such as Eastland and Talmadge, vehement opponents of 1960s civil rights laws who never repented or apologized for espousing openly racist views.
He has also continued to touch women and girls and offer old-fashioned and sexist advice to young girls despite being told not to by staffers.
“You’ve been doing this X number of years and you can’t do this anymore,’” one adviser, referring to Biden, told the Washington Post.
According to a Washington Post report from 1987, Democratic consultants expressed nervousness that Biden “believes he can simply will himself into the presidency.”
Twenty years later, Biden’s campaign was once again defined by his supposed moderation on policy and legislative experience. Not until Barack Obama surged in the polls did the then-Delaware senator realize that Democratic voters demanded change.
