Vice President Joe Biden can’t seem to get anybody interested in the White House run he hopes to make next year.
Biden frequently alludes to the possibility of making a third attempt at the Democratic nomination. But national news media have not written a single recent story examining his policy record or his performance in the Obama administration — even while giving close attention to the vice president’s frequent gaffes and hands-on manner with seemingly uncomfortable women and girls.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post Monday featured front-page stories about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has indicated his interest in the 2016 presidential Republican nomination. The Times story centered on Walker’s views on social issues. The Post explored Walker’s impact on government employee unions in his state.
Biden has yet to receive any coverage on that scale, even though in the last two weeks he visited early primary voting states Iowa and South Carolina and is scheduled to visit New Hampshire, another early primary state, on Wednesday. In a story that ran on an inside page of Monday’s Wall Street journal, Colleen McCain Nelson took note of Biden’s campaign-style travels but noted dryly that “few people expect him to run.”
Larry Sabato, head of the non-partisan Center for Politics and a political science professor at the University of Virginia, told the Washington Examiner media desk that the dearth of Biden coverage is due to “a combination of several factors.”
One of them, Sabato said, is Biden’s “pattern of saying and doing bizarre things.”
Last week saw a flurry of reports on Biden’s public behavior, ranging from a comment he made about having “great relationships” with Wilmington, Delaware-based Somali cab drivers to his intimate whisper into the ear of incoming Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s wife Stephanie.
A photo of Biden from the swearing-in of Carter showed him with his hands resting on the back of Stephanie Carter while he appeared to whisper closely in her ear from behind. The photo was mocked throughout social media and blogs, which dubbed the image “creepy.”
“Just Biden being Biden? VP’s odd moves give pause,” read a headline from the Associated Press.
Regarding his statement about Somali cab drivers in Delaware, the fact checker PolitiFact rated the statement “inaccurate and ridiculous.” Washington Post “Fact Checker” columnist Glenn Kessler noted that Delaware’s Somali population is so small that Biden’s tales could not possibly be true, awarding Biden four Pinocchios (the paper’s highest rating for inaccuracy).
“Even many Democratic leaders don’t seem to regard him as presidential material,” said Sabato.
Sabato also referenced national and state poll results that show former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a likely presidential candidate, with double-digit leads over any other potential Democratic challenger. The only apparent threat to ascendancy, freshman Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., comes out ahead of Biden in most polls — though unlike Biden, Warren maintains steadfastly that she is not going to run for president in 2016.
“Plus, very few people think Biden is going to run,” added Sabato. “He’s lost two prior presidential nominating campaigns, and he’d be 74 by the time of the 2017 inauguration, by far the oldest president entering office.”
Veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi also noted that Biden may be non-committal to a White House run because it’s not likely he could win his party’s nomination. “He’s being realistic,” Trippi told the Wall Street Journal in an article printed Monday.
The number of news articles about Biden published since the 2014 midterm election, the last nation-wide election before 2016, is lower than the number for other potential presidential candidates in both political parties.
A Lexis Nexis search for news articles centered on “Rand Paul,” the Republican senator from Kentucky, renders 1,443 results between the midterm elections last year and Monday. “Chris Christie,” New Jersey’s Republican governor, racks up 2,785. “Scott Walker” renders than 3,000 results.
On the Democratic side, “Hillary Clinton,” who has kept a low profile in recent weeks, returns 1,951 results.
For “Joe Biden”: just 1,316.
Biden’s office did not return a request for comment.
