Earlier this week, I laid out the case for why Joe Biden might run in 2016. In a nutshell, he would like to be president and he might think he can win. He was never likely to get another chance after his second campaign and almost certainly won’t have the opportunity again.
This Glenn Thrush piece, perhaps unintentionally, is a good argument for why Biden shouldn’t run.
It paints the vice president as, quite understandably, still grieving over his son’s untimely death and suggests that Biden loyalists who would like him to run have encouraged the press to exaggerate his halfhearted moves toward campaign planning.
There’s speculation about whether his wife really wants him to run (it’s not easy to mount a successful presidential campaign without spousal buy-in, since it’s a family affair nowadays) and whether Barack Obama prefers Hillary Clinton.
But the biggest reason for skepticism about Biden 2016 is here: “Since his 2012 re-election, Biden had opted for inaction over action — he opted not to create a leadership [political action committee] for the 2014 midterms, he balked at forming a presidential super PAC, he didn’t seriously sound out donors until this summer.”
At most, Biden seems to be banking on a Hillary implosion that certainly could come but is by no means guaranteed. Even in 2008, when Clinton’s campaign looked more like a demonstration of Murphy’s Law than a run for the presidency, she won most of the biggest state primaries and just barely lost to Obama.
Meanwhile, there have been stories about “friends of Joe Biden” worrying that he’ll “bruise” himself by running, with Obama adviser David Axelrod publicly and straightforwardly suggesting he doesn’t.
Translation: That’s a nice legacy you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
Democrats could certainly use a Plan B. But if you’re going to take on the Clinton machine, you have to be all in. Is Biden?
