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Biden Fails to Lead on Virus Fight
Townhall.com ^ | March 25, 2020 | byron York

Posted on 03/25/2020 7:54:28 AM PDT by Kaslin

Give Joe Biden some credit. On Jan. 27, he published an op-ed in USA Today recognizing that the coronavirus outbreak could become a big problem. But he devoted nearly the entire piece to bashing President Trump -- who was then fighting off impeachment from Biden's old Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill -- and nearly none of it to explaining what he, Joe Biden, would do to fight the pandemic.

Since then, where has Biden been? It's been eight weeks since the Iowa caucuses, when Biden began a terrible stretch at the polls that threatened his presidential candidacy. It's been three weeks since South Carolina and Super Tuesday, when he roared back and took a big lead over rival Bernie Sanders. Two weeks since primaries in Michigan and other states, when Biden took a prohibitive lead in the delegate race. And it's been one week since primaries in Florida and elsewhere, when Biden essentially became the presumptive nominee.

During that time, the coronavirus outbreak has turned into a historic national crisis.

So what has the man who wants to be the next president, now confident of his path to his party's nomination, done? Not a lot. Biden is "largely out of sight hunkered down in Delaware," The New York Times reported recently.

Biden did give a speech on March 12 to explain what he would do as president to confront the virus. But his plan was not much different from what the Trump administration has already been doing. And why did Biden, after his initial op-ed, let so much time pass without offering a comprehensive proposal for dealing with the crisis? Especially since his main criticism of Trump is that the president has not acted swiftly enough?

In short, Biden has been slow to explain why he would have reacted more quickly than Trump.

Now, Biden, who has devoted lots of time during the virus crisis to holding "virtual" fundraisers, is playing catch-up with a plan to start "briefings" from his house in Delaware. "They put a new high-speed line into my home," Biden told reporters. "They've converted a recreation room, basically, into a television studio."

Meanwhile, when he has addressed the crisis, Biden has been offering little more than boilerplate. Look at this, from a recent virtual fundraiser, according to a pool report: "This is a time for this nation to come together, because, folks, we're all in this together. This virus doesn't care whether you're a Democrat or Republican. It doesn't discriminate on the basis of your gender or race or ethnicity or anything else. And from the Great Depression to two world wars to 9/11 to the pandemic of 1918, this country has always overcome every crisis we faced in our history. We're gonna overcome this one, too."

Biden had nothing more to offer in a recent web ad. He focused on a small snippet of Trump's news conference Saturday, where the president took questions from NBC's Peter Alexander. After an extended exchange with Alexander, Trump snapped, "You're a terrible reporter." The ad was an attempt to contrast Trump's temperament with Biden's, with Biden saying things like, "This is about America. This is about the world. This is about how we bring people together."

The Trump campaign has fired back. "When President Trump took the critical step of restricting travel from China in response to the coronavirus, Biden called it 'xenophobic,'" campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said recently. "Most of what Biden says the government should do are things President Trump is already doing."

Biden has, in fact, accused Trump of xenophobia in the virus crisis. When the president announced travel restrictions on China, Biden cited what he called Trump's "record of hysteria and xenophobia, hysterical xenophobia." When Trump referred to coronavirus as a "foreign virus," Biden said the president was "[falling] back on xenophobia."

On the substance of Biden's plans, an earlier Trump campaign statement said Biden "plagiarized" his response from the president -- echoing a long-ago incident from Biden's 1988 presidential campaign when he dropped out after it was revealed he had plagiarized a British politician's speech.

Now, with the briefings, Biden is starting a new phase of his campaign. Yes, the briefings will be about coronavirus, but they will also be about Biden's standing in the Democratic Party. For a party out of the White House, in an election year, the presidential nominee is the leader of the party. Biden is not the nominee yet, but he is all but there. Does he appear to be the leader of the Democratic Party? No. Meanwhile, other Democrats, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, are actually in power and on television every day -- giving briefings -- dealing with the crisis.

So Biden's new move is a front-runner playing catch-up while the rest of the political world deals with an unprecedented crisis.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: joebiden; wuhancoronavirus
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God help this country if he gets elected.
1 posted on 03/25/2020 7:54:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

He doesn’t even know what day it is..................


2 posted on 03/25/2020 7:56:46 AM PDT by Red Badger (If people were to God like dogs are to people, the world would be a really great place..............)
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To: Red Badger

Seriously. I’ve actually quit making fun of him because he’s really in very sad shape.


3 posted on 03/25/2020 8:00:04 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

“Seriously. I’ve actually quit making fun of him because he’s really in very sad shape.”

Don’t do it. Mocking and laughing at someone is potent, continue on. I understand the pang of guilt that comes from mocking someone so clearly on the decline. And I wouldn’t do it, if he weren’t running for president. Slow Joe and the people around him won’t take a graceful exit. For that reason, and the threat he presents, (Americans really are stupid enough to vote for him), he’s fair game.


4 posted on 03/25/2020 8:04:22 AM PDT by brownsfan (Behold, the power of government cheese.)
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To: Kaslin

Hard for him to do when he needs to be led to the bathroom


5 posted on 03/25/2020 8:05:29 AM PDT by ronnie raygun (nicdip.com)
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To: Kaslin
God help this country if he gets elected.

Whoever he picks as VP candidate will be the one finishing his term if he's elected. Can you imagine Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris as President?

6 posted on 03/25/2020 8:06:16 AM PDT by GaryCrow
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To: Kaslin

These Biden articles are so absurd.

Anyone who believes that he will be a candidate for President this November is an idiot.


7 posted on 03/25/2020 8:06:48 AM PDT by Jim Noble (There is nothing racist in stating plainly what most people already know)
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To: Jim Noble
Anyone who believes that he will be a candidate for President this November is an idiot.

He's spent the last week wondering around his basement tv studio looking for the door to go upstairs.

8 posted on 03/25/2020 8:08:01 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: Buckeye McFrog

I’ve actually quit making fun of him because he’s really in very sad shape.


Same here.


9 posted on 03/25/2020 8:08:07 AM PDT by cuban leaf (The political war playing out in every country now: Globalists vs Nationalists)
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To: Jim Noble

He doesn’t really want to be President.


10 posted on 03/25/2020 8:10:11 AM PDT by equaviator (There's nothing like the universe to bring you down to earth.)
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To: Kaslin

There is not a chance!


11 posted on 03/25/2020 8:13:47 AM PDT by Taxman ((We will never be a truly FRee people so long as we have the income tax and the IRS!))
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To: Kaslin

Biden fails. Period.


12 posted on 03/25/2020 8:28:05 AM PDT by Huskrrrr
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To: Kaslin

Fails to lead? Biteme couldn’t lead a cat to a fish store!


13 posted on 03/25/2020 8:43:06 AM PDT by jmaroneps37 (Conservatism is truth. Liberalism is lies.)
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To: Kaslin

JOE F THEM lying dog-faced, pony soldiers. VIRUS since 1973. The debt was well under 1 TRILLION.

https://usdebtclock.org

TOTALITARIANISM 101...US v THEM...330 MILLION v 535 +++++++GRETA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDbeqj-1XOo

Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
moved from side to side
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it’s only round and round and round
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
the poster bearer cried
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There’s room for you inside
Down and Out
It can’t be helped but there’s a lot of it about
With, without
And who’ll deny that’s what the fightings all about
Get out of the way, it’s a busy day
And I’ve got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died

OK...I won’t even mention Ukraine, Joek.


14 posted on 03/25/2020 8:44:17 AM PDT by PGalt
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To: PGalt

That geezer’s cruising for a bruising.


15 posted on 03/25/2020 8:51:11 AM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: Kaslin

Joe has left the field mentally.


16 posted on 03/25/2020 8:53:50 AM PDT by Rapscallion
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To: MrEdd

“I was really drunk at the time.”


17 posted on 03/25/2020 8:54:04 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Kaslin

The Democrats’ plan is to make Trump so unpopular that any Democrat can beat him. They thought it would work in 2016 and it didn’t, but their strategy hasn’t changed a bit...relentlessly attacking Trump thinking that the next attack will do him in. The current strategy is to wreck the economy so he will be like Herbert Hoover in 1932 (except that Joe Biden is nowhere nearly as reassuring as a leader than FDR was in 1932, as the incumbent governor of New York).


18 posted on 03/25/2020 9:19:49 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Kaslin

Max Headroom minus the smarts.


19 posted on 03/25/2020 9:41:00 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Kaslin

On “The Tonight Show”, Johnny Carson sometimes played a character named “Floyd R. Turbo”, who would come out and give a rebuttal to a recent editorial. Joe Biden’s video performances have been very similar to Floyd’s.


20 posted on 03/25/2020 9:53:05 AM PDT by GreenHornet
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