The will-he-or-won’t-he swirling around former Vice President Joe Biden may finally be lifted in the coming days and weeks. According to the Wall Street Journal, Biden has reached out to friends, allies, and old political associates telling them that he plans to run for president. If Biden doesn’t get cold feet, a tremor will soon shake up the Democratic field, the most diverse crop of presidential candidates in history.
Biden is the safe option for the average, longtime registered Democrat who believes President Trump is a disaster for the country but who may not be particularly happy with the Democratic candidates who have declared so far. The Democratic Party has changed enormously in just the span of a few years from the typical left-of-center platform to calling for a socialist utopia. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the 2016 runner-up, single-handedly took positions that the Democratic Party ducked and weaved from and turned them into mainstream Democratic positions — universal healthcare, free public college education, a more pro-Palestinian bent on Middle East policy, and exponentially higher taxes on the wealthy donor class.
Even so, there are still many Democratic centrists who aren’t fans of Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Others who have impressive pedigrees, such as South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., either don’t have the name recognition to capture national attention or aren’t seen as candidates who can excite the Democratic faithful to the polls during a general election. For most Democrats, that is exactly what is needed: a Democrat people know and who has a realistic shot at making Trump a one-term president.
[Related: Joe Biden draws effusive praise from Obama as he nears 2020 decision]
Biden fits the mold well. Having served in the Senate for decades, he had a national profile even before President Barack Obama tapped him as his vice presidential running mate in 2008. He has the blue-collar, working-class appeal to a tee, largely because he is a blue-collar guy brought up with a blue-collar family history. His positioning among the other candidates is malleable enough that die-hard Obama supporters and skittish Trump Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin could find him attractive. The polls (yes, polls are meaningless at this stage and the first primary debate is still months away) suggest as much. A CNN survey puts Biden in first place at 28 percent, ahead of Sanders at 20 percent and Harris at 12 percent.
Biden does have issues however, and they go beyond positions he took as a senator that will disturb a lot of millennial Democrats (voting for the war in Iraq and writing a tough-on-crime bill are two of the most problematic).
For one, Biden is not a good fundraiser. His re-election campaigns in the Senate were not the least bit competitive, which meant Biden didn’t have to pick up the phone and beg for money. Given the fact that Sanders and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke can raise millions of dollars in 24 hours without the help of super PACs and large donors means that Biden’s strength as a candidate will be measured in part on how much cash he rakes in.
The second issue is electability. Sure, Biden may look electable now, but he was never a great presidential candidate in the past. He dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after a plagiarism scandal and didn’t even reach the first primary vote. Twenty years later, Biden left the primary after a dismal 0.9 percent in the Iowa caucuses. He has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth, getting himself into trouble he then has to dig himself out of. While Biden can connect with people and speechify like any good politician, his mettle hasn’t been tested in a national campaign (Obama, his former boss, was the campaigner in chief).
Will the same faults that tripped up Biden in his first two presidential campaigns trip him up again in the third? Are Democrats ready to move on to fresher faces? Will Biden’s blue collar mantra be enough to get some Trump voters in the Midwest to reassess their support? We won’t know until Biden stops thinking about running and officially declares.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
