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Uncle Joe’s family web:
If Biden runs for president he would give Trump’s reality-TV family a run for the money
February 25, 2019, 8:20 PM
Maureen Dowd Edit Page

It’s a truism in Washington that when politicians say they’re not running so they can spend more time with their families, something else, possibly something salacious, is afoot. But with Joe Biden, his family history is so tragic and so fraught, calculations about how a presidential run would affect his wounded clan are not code for some other problem.

There was a school of thought that, given the monumental effort it took to dismantle the Clinton machine, it would be better to move on from Hillary. Some Biden allies felt that his powerful story of rising above personal loss – his first wife and infant daughter died in a car crash just before Christmas in 1972 – could be a superpower to connect with suffering Americans.

But Obama felt differently. He could make it up to Hillary and feminist activists for hopscotching over the New York senator who might have blown out the glass ceiling in 2008. Also, Obama and his strategists thought Biden had hit his ceiling, had his day, had too many gaffes. It escaped the attention of Professor Obama that a populist rage was rising, and that a multimillionaire taking a fortune from Goldman Sachs on the eve of her campaign might not suit the moment. Uncle Joe may be the epitome of the establishment, but at least the teetotaler knows how to talk to Joe Sixpack.

The president told his faithful vice-president that it was Hillary’s turn and Biden tried to accept it. Biden had known for years that the party would want to follow the first African-American president with the first woman president. Biden succumbed to pressure and gave way to Hillary. And the rest is sordid history. Members of Obama’s inner circle say the former president realises now he should not have christened Hillary the successor, that he should have let Bernie, Joe and Hillary fight it out.

As Donald Trump’s reality-TV family took over the White House, Biden had to deal with his own family’s scandalous headlines. He was doubtless upset about the public nature of the son’s divorce. Hunter Biden also said his travails should not deter his father from running: “We don’t pretend that we are different from families all over America that have to face the loss of loved ones, or have to deal with the fallout of divorces.”

But not all families have to stomach Donald Trump’s low blows, as Biden will if he runs. And Biden will have to temper that Irish temper of his.