Vice President Joe Biden’s clear signals of interest in the presidency has piqued the not-quite-but-almost panic going on among insider Democrats that want Hillary Clinton to the be their party’s 2016 nominee.
Biden is a loyal Democratic foot soldier, and few expect him to crash Clinton’s party. But her acolytes are increasingly nervous. The vice president has done nothing to tamp down speculation that he’s preparing to play the role of Democratic savior and jump into the White House race if the former secretary of state is effectively pushed out because of the ongoing scandal surrounding her use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department.
“More and more, Democrats are convinced he’s actually thinking of getting into the race,” a Democratic insider based in Washington said Monday. “The meeting with Sen. Warren was an interesting touchstone and set off alarm bells everywhere.”
This Democrat was referring to Biden’s meeting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the preferred choice for president of the Democratic Party’s liberal base before she definitively took her name out of contention. Biden and Warren convened Saturday at the vice president’s residence in Washington to discuss economic policy, CNN reported.
Clinton continues to face political blowback for her use of private email and a non-government computer server, kept at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., during her time as President Obama’s first secretary of state.
What began as a congressional inquiry into Clinton’s role in the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya — an attack that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens — has morphed into a broader investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI over how she and her aides at State handled classified material vis-à-vis her private server.
Clinton is still far and away the Democratic presidential front-runner, with 49.3 percent of the vote in the latest RealClearPolitics.com average of national polls gauging Democratic voters, compared to 25 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist from Vermont, and 12 percent for Biden. But Sanders’ campaign appears to have harnessed more grassroots energy than Clinton’s; and, Biden’s potential candidacy is casting an additional shadow.
“The Democratic primary has been fairly low key, but the addition of another high-profile candidate like Biden would definitely add more interest to the debate,” said Edward Espinoza, a Democratic operative in Austin, Texas. “Maybe we would actually get to see some debates.”
The biggest problem Biden is causing Clinton at the moment is in the headlines, including this one from the Washington Post that posted Monday afternoon: “Top Democratic fundraisers invited to meet with Joe Biden at Naval Observatory.”
In modern presidential politics, Biden would be launching a campaign pretty late in the game.
As Clinton backers are quick to point out, the vice president has no political operation and no national fundraising network. Clinton raised nearly $50 million her first quarter as a presidential candidates; Biden hasn’t raised a dime yet and wasn’t very good at fundraising the last time he ran for president, in 2008. The vice president also lacks the support of an independent super PAC, a practical necessity in this day and age.
Biden, having run with Obama twice, surely knows all of this, which is why Democrats and political operatives who have followed his career believe he’s not necessarily gearing up to run. Rather, they believe Biden is setting the table to be the top alternative to Clinton, should she falter irreparably. Some Democrats speculate that other top Democrats might look at the race should that happen, possibly Secretary of State John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004.
As a matter of politics, Clintonistas caution that Biden isn’t the savior he might appear to be in any event. He is famous for his verbal gaffes, is more tied to Obama than Clinton — a potential challenge after two terms of the same party running the White House — and he lacks the political experience of winning a presidential primary. As a White House candidate in 2008, Biden flamed out in Iowa and never made it to New Hampshire. He also dropped out of the 1988 race.
“I think it would help Clinton if Biden got in, because he’s no gem of a candidate,” a Democratic operative said. “But I don’t think it’s real.”
Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.
