Go with Shotgun Joe!]
Posted on 08/05/2018 6:06:33 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
Joe Biden is leading the Democratic field in some early polls asking voters about the party’s prospective presidential candidates in 2020.
But in his old stomping grounds in the U.S. Senate, there are plenty of skeptics who point to the former vice president’s age, his support for the Iraq War and his two failed presidential bids as reasons to doubt he would be successful.
“It’s hard to see someone [winning] who voted for the Iraq war. People are looking to turn the page,” one senior Democratic aide said.
A second senior Democratic aide said “polls show that voters want someone who is new.”
Biden, 76, served for decades in the Senate before his election as vice president.
A Democratic senator who requested anonymity to comment on Biden’s chances said “polls this early don’t mean anything” and argued a Politico/Morning Consult survey published Wednesday that showed Biden leading Trump 44 percent to 37 percent among registered voters doesn’t mean much since it didn’t poll other candidates against Trump.
Other Democrats noted Biden’s failed bids for the White House in 2008 and 1988 to argue that he might not be a strong candidate in 2020.
A spokesman for Biden declined to comment for this story.
Perhaps it’s not surprising to find skeptics of Biden in the Senate even among Democrats, given the number of Democratic senators thinking about running for president.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are all seen as likely candidates, and they might not be the only Democratic senators running.
Biden also has his supporters, who argue that he’s a strong bet to win back white working-class voters who abandoned the party in three key states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
“I’m a big fan of Biden. We need to win back white voters in the Midwest and Biden can do it,” said a veteran Senate Democratic aide.
The aide said Biden could have an unobstructed shot at appealing to working-class and white male voters in a primary — especially if Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) doesn’t run for president.
Many think Biden will run for president, and he would start out a race with a number of advantages.
Polls showing Biden at the top of Democratic wish-lists likely reflect Biden’s high name identification and ties to former President Obama, a revered figure in the party.
Obama’s first retrospective job approval rating as measured by Gallup in February was 63 percent — a point higher than Bill Clinton’s and 10 points higher than George W. Bush’s.
Just last week, Biden and Obama visited at a bakery in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., together — a photo opportunity that did nothing to dissuade those who think the former vice president will run for the White House.
What ever they think of Biden’s chances, Democrats feel their party has a good chance of knocking off Trump in 2020.
The Politico/Morning Consult poll found a generic Democratic candidate doing even better than Biden and leading Trump 48- 35 percent.
Still, Alan Kessler, a Wilmington, Delaware, native and a longtime Biden supporter who backed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, said the poll will encourage Biden to think more seriously about running.
“If you’re toying around [with running for president] and you get a poll like that, certainly you have to be encouraged,” he said.
Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Biden’s longtime Senate colleague, said it’s “not surprising at all” that a poll would show Biden “in a very positive light at this point” because of his “substantial name recognition” from being in public service a long time.
Dorgan is predicting a big presidential field in 2020 and “Democrats will have a lot of choices to make.”
He thinks Biden will start with a lead in the crowded field but expects “we will see new leaders emerge.”
He says the desire for a fresh face is “one of the things that Joe would have to overcome” but added “he will be someone that a lot of Democrats will look at very fondly because he’s provided leadership for a long while.”
Liberal activists argue that Biden’s weaker performance versus Trump compared to a generic candidate shows that the party is ready to nominate a more outspoken progressive.
“He’s basically a Democratic placeholder that has universal name recognition and is kind of stand-in for people. When they think Biden, they think Obama,” said Neil Sroka, communications director for Democracy for America, a nationwide liberal grassroots activist organization.
“The next Democratic nominee and I believe the next president is going to be an inclusive populist champion. Period. Bar none,” he said. “The idea that you’re going to run in 2020 on a neo-centrist agenda is beyond ludicrous, especially in a big dynamic Democratic primary.”
Dole was given his shot in 1996, but against an incumbent. That was the end of the line for his political career. President Trump will be even more popular as an incumbent running for reelection in 2020, irrespective of years of smears by partisan media shills, so Biden could very well be the nominee, just to get him off the books. The one thing that might trip him up will be that 2020 is going to be a referendum on Obamanation, and who better personifies that than the former veep? Thanks yesthatjallen.
The democrat problem is they don’t have any ideas to run on...
“Health Care” worked as an issue in the past because people thought it might work. But it was a disaster. And the worst parts hadn’t even kicked in by the time Trump put the kibosh on it. Democrats can’t run on healthcare...
.……...of course there are a handful of Biden equals in the Democratic Party right now meaning “people who have not a chinamans chance in hell of beating Trump”
I would love to see the Dims nominate the newest loser on their bench Alexander Ocasio Cortez, or hell run Hillary again, or Bernie, or Maxine or the white male chump Schumer.
Then, second tier creeps could be Schiff, Kaine, Oprah, Cuban, Cuomo, the communist Booker, the Yellow Rose of Kalifornia Kamala Harris, Kirsten, Jerry Brown, Pocahontas,
…………...as Hillary famously said “AT THIS POINT, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
I really believe that the way Hillary Clinton and her followers reacted to her loss has set back any hope of a woman president by at least 20 years, if not more.
Oh please oh please let it be “Shotgun” Biden in 2020! Trump will WIPE THE FLOOR with him, and Trump won’t be intimidated my him in the debates.
Yeah those videos are enough to end his chances at becoming President.
They need a minority male again. They need to turn out the minority vote more than Hillary did. I think a male minority candidate would be better for them, I don’t think male minority voters turnout for a woman like they would a man. Identity politics is their path to victory.
Freegards
Have any of these people ever read a book on surveys? This far out they are revealing nothing but name recognition. And to have a man who sat as VP for eight years not be the overwhelming favorite is a testimony to how poorly he was treated by Obama.
Or maybe we can run Maduro.”
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The GOP wouldn’t challenge his nomination any more than they challenged the Kenyaneisan Usurper.
“I’ve noted a very apparent trend among Democrats to claim they are ‘populist.’”
yeah, they suddenly changed their tune from being socialists when polls came out showing that 76% of Americans wouldn’t vote for a socialist ...
“Of all of the potential 2020 candidates....Biden would be the toughest competition even at his age against Trump, however the results that Trump will present by 2020 to the working class whites and the rest of Americans (economic factors)will negate any potential gain Biden could have received in wooing them.”
i whole-heartedly agree on both counts ...
EARLY POLLS FAVOR HILLARY.
PUKE
His slogan can be "Win One for the GROPER"!!
Please please let it be Dopey Joe. His brain damaged groping will be a joke that will pull down and wipe out the last remaining Democrats.
Good point.
WHAT? Have they given up on Hillary?
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