The man famous for being Obama’s Vice President, but more famous for being a creepy uncle meme, Joe Biden, is reportedly telling people he’s going to challenge Trump for the Oval Office in 2020 behind closed doors.
According to the Washington Examiner, Biden is telling people he’ll run only if no clear leader emerges within the Democrat party. With the only leader currently being Clinton, who has already lost twice, then Biden will likely be a shoo-in as the nominee.
“If someone emerges that the former VP believes can beat [Trump], I think he is at peace with that,” a Biden donor said. “On the other hand, if that person doesn’t exist or doesn’t run, you can expect Joe Biden to take a very serious look.”
However, there seems to be a split within the Democratic party on whether or not Biden should run.
The Hill’s Michael Starr Hopkins wrote a fawning article addressed to Biden, begging him to return and save the Democrats in 2020 and returning the party to something akin to the “golden Obama years.”
Hopkins says that if Biden focuses on a more economic message, then they can reclaim the White House:
In this climate, you are the only candidate who can harken back to the golden Obama years, while bridging the gap to a party based more on economics. The only way to bring back many of the Democrats who voted for Obama and then voted for Donald Trump is to focus on a more economic message. Democrats have historically been able to implement social programs by focusing on the economic benefit that they offer to hardworking Americans. It was only after Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, followed by Lee Atwater and the culture wars, that Democrats began to focus on a more emotional appeal.
On the other hand, Paul Blest at The Outline takes a different view. Blest believes Biden should hit the road due to his racist tendencies, and mistreatment of women:
While both Clinton and Sanders were criticized for being tone-deaf on race last year, Biden also has a well-documented history of making racist statements, like when he said in 2007 that Obama was the “first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” There was also that time in 2008 when he said that “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts [in Delaware] unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
And…
When Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment, was called to testify, Biden did “little to stop the attacks” on her and chose “not to call three other witnesses who would have echoed Hill’s charges of sexual harassment,” Politico writes. More recently, Biden’s tendency to touch women inappropriately —long written off as part of his charm — has come into long-past-due scrutiny.
As it stands, over half of the Democrats want the party to move further to the left to more conform to the political leanings of socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
In an age where the left worships Sanders, Biden might not stand much of a chance with his own party, however, he is far more likely to win over moderates who walked away from Clinton and signed up with Trump.
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