Joe Biden will officially enter the presidential race on Thursday, The Hill reports. “Biden will announce his candidacy with a video… and then will travel to Pittsburgh for a more formal event on Monday.”
The Washington Examiner reports Biden abandoned plans to kick of his campaign in Charlottesville, VA amid opposition from residents who were “unhappy about the scene a tragedy the city would prefer to forget being used as a campaign launch backdrop.”
Politico: “Bernie Sanders has solidified his front-runner standing among members of the progressive political action committee Democracy for America, while Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke have both fallen back sharply, according to the group’s latest straw poll.”
“Elizabeth Warren is now running second to Sanders in the DFA poll — though she trails the independent senator from Vermont by more than 30 percentage points.”
A new Monmouth poll finds race and gender “do not seem to be important factors for Democratic voters when considering who the party should choose to run against Trump.”
“Fully 87% say the race of the nominee does not matter. Just 5% say it would be better for Democrats to nominate a person of color, which is offset by 6% who say it would actually be better for the party to nominate a white candidate. Similarly, 77% say the gender of the nominee does not matter. Just 7% say it would be better for Democrats to nominate a woman, while slightly more (12%) say it would actually be better for the party to nominate a man.”
Said pollster Patrick Murray: “This is the most diverse field of presidential candidates in history, but that doesn’t seem to be a major consideration for Democratic voters at this early stage of the campaign. It’s probably a large reason why a couple of old white guys are leading the pack right now.”
“Joe Biden has led nearly every Democratic primary poll without doing anything. Now, the former vice president’s team is planning to solidify his front-runner status with a wave of high-profile organizing, fundraising and endorsement news when he enters the race,” Politico reports.
“Biden’s campaign in waiting has ramped up over the past several weeks — calling donors across the country and tapping decades-old friendships to line up support from major Democratic Party figures, organized labor, members of Congress and elected officials from early presidential states.”
“As Biden seeks on-the-ground labor support in early primary and caucus states, he has all but locked in the endorsement of the International Association of Firefighters, the union that helped boost John Kerry to the Democratic nomination in 2004.”
“Caught off guard by his sudden surge, Pete Buttigieg’s rivals are scrambling to find vulnerabilities and lines of attack that can be used against him,” five officials with opposing Democratic primary campaigns and Republican political groups tell NBC News.
“The situation is different than with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, Democrats who have long been on the national scene and were widely expected to run for president…In contrast, Buttigieg was on nobody’s radar as a serious presidential contender until a few weeks ago. As a millennial who has never held an office higher than mayor of a midsize town, his record is largely unexamined.”
Fox News will host a town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, Politico reports, “making him the third Democrat to sit down with the network at length.” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace will moderate the town hall, which is set for May 19 and will be held in Claremont, N.H.
“The head of the DNC pledged the committee wouldn’t use hacked emails or stolen data for political gain ahead of the 2020 presidential election and pressed his RNC counterpart to make the same commitment,” Politicoreports.
Nate Silver: “If there’s one thing the Democratic establishment is good at, it’s panicking. And the latest reason for panic among Democratic insiders is Bernie Sanders. According to a New York Times article from earlier this month, the prospect of a Sanders nomination is ‘spooking establishment-aligned Democrats, some of whom are worried that his nomination could lure a third-party centrist into the field.’ It is ‘also creating tensions about what, if anything, should be done to halt Mr. Sanders,’ the article says.”
“Should Democratic insiders really be worried that Sanders will be nominated and cost them an election against President Trump that they’d otherwise win? I’m here to make the case that they shouldn’t be, or at least not yet.”
Jeff Greenfield: “As he prepares to enter the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden is carrying with him nearly a half a century in the major leagues of American politics. When Pete Buttigieg was born, Biden was had been a U.S. senator for almost nine years. He has cast votes on conflicts in Vietnam, Nicaragua, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the confirmation of 14 Supreme Court justices and the impeachment of a president. He’s served in office when opinions on crime, abortion, race and sexuality have changed root and branch. Perhaps Biden’s biggest challenge—apart from his age itself—will be to persuade Democratic voters not to view his past through the prism of the present.”
“It would likelier be a lot easier for Biden if he were a Republican. One of the signal features of the 2016 campaign was the capacity of GOP voters to sweep aside Donald Trump’s past, both his words and his deeds…. It’s not at all clear that Democrats, especially this year, view the past with such forbearance.”
It feels like Biden is already badly fumbling this. Charlottesville…. no wait COMCAST! This, coupled with the (admittedly diminishing) “its his turn, he’s inevitable” aura around his still not official run….. ive said it before.. is TERRIFYINGLY like 2016 (from the perspective of someone not incredibly excited about Clinton running.
IN general i like Joe Biden. I think he’s a decent guy. But he is part of many problems we need to deal with. I think he is partially responsible, because of his RAVE act and his approach to crack sentencing, for the incarceration crisis among young men of color. I get he may acknowledge that, may even be repentant for it…. but there are other people running who dont have that history. It’s like HRC’s Iraq War Albatross in 2008. Sure, Obama wasnt a senator for the War authorization, but he still didnt have that vote… and Biden also has that.
He isnt a candidate yet, so my personal NAP for actual candidates (Tim Ryan and the other 40something milquetoast men arent serious candidates) so here’s to hoping some higher power intervenes and convinces him to endorse Warren or Buttigieg instead.
WHOA
McCain family to support Biden in 2020 race in bid to defeat Trump
well, they should do it quietly if they want him to make it through the primary.
I don’t think that will be a problem for a great many typical D voters. There are plenty of them who respect McCain (wouldn’t vote for him) and who like the symbolism of bi-partisanship. Others will add this factoid to the “electibility” pile. Plenty of folks who are distressed that they don’t work together will see this as a bit of a coronation.