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Joe Biden's Under-the-Radar 2016 Presidential Bid - Atlantic Mobile

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/is-joe-biden-running-for-president/387115/

Is Joe Biden Running for President? Jae C. Hong/AP

There's only one prominent Democratic contender who has traveled to all
three early presidential primary states so far in 2015. It's not Hillary
Clinton. Nor is it Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or even Martin
O'Malley.

It's Joe Biden, who may be running the most under-the-radar White House
campaign of any sitting vice president in modern times. Biden made stops in
Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina last month. The appearances were
all ostensibly aimed at promoting President Obama's agenda, but as the old
axiom goes, no politician visits any of these states by accident, and
certainly not in the calendar year before primary voters head to the polls.

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The 72-year-old, generally regarded as the nation's well-meaning but goofy (and
occasionally creepy
<http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/joe-biden-whispers-ear-nominees-wife-29045591>)
grandpa, Biden has long been considered an afterthought in the 2016
sweepstakes. The assumption: He's not crazy enough to think he could take
on Hillary, his good friend and former Cabinet-mate...is he?

To hear the vice president tell it, however, that's exactly what he'll be
considering over the next several months. Unlike Clinton, Biden has never
been coy about his interest in seeking the presidency for the third time
since 1988. Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos in January
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/joe-biden-reveals-timeframe-2016-presidential-decision/story?id=28931878>whether
he might challenge the former secretary of state, Biden replied, "Yes,
there's a chance." He said he views the 2016 field as "wide open" on both
sides and emphasized that he doesn't need to make a decision on the race
until late in the summer. Speaking in Iowa last month, Biden also notably
embraced the idea—leveled as criticism by Republicans—that the Democratic
nominee in 2016 would be running for Obama's third term. "I call it
sticking with what works," the vice president declared
<http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/232647-biden-2016-is-battle-for-third-obama-term>
.

At the same time, Biden has made no formal moves to set up a political
organization or campaign committee, hire staff and volunteers, or raise the
money needed to be a viable candidate. Friends and former advisers wouldn't
speak on the record about a possible Biden bid, saying the vice president
told his inner circle last year that he did want to encourage public talk
about a White House candidacy for some time. His office wouldn't comment
for this story, either. Yet it's clear from his travel and own remarks that
Biden has not dismissed the possibility of running. His friends and allies
insist the vice president is neither delusional nor is he simply
positioning himself as a back-up for the Democratic Party in case Clinton
forgoes the race or implodes politically.

"I can tell you without any fear of contradiction, her decision will have
no impact on his," Dick Harpootlian, the former state Democratic chairman
in South Carolina, told me last week. A colorful personal-injury lawyer in
Columbia, Harpootlian has emerged as Clinton's chief antagonist within the
party in recent weeks. When he's not telling anyone
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/03/04/top-biden-backer-hillary-clinton-will-die-by-1000-cuts-on-e-mail-story/>
who will listen that the scandal over Hillary's secret email system will
torpedo her candidacy, Harpootlian has been talking up Biden as the party's
best alternative.

"This is a guy who is more knowledgeable about foreign affairs than Hillary
Clinton and John Kerry put together," Harpootlian said. He pointed to
Biden's proposal nearly a decade ago to partition Iraq into three parts
controlled by Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. It was derided by many in the
foreign policy world, including the defense secretary at the time, Robert
Gates. But with the rise of ISIS, Harpootlian argued it was prescient.
"Think if we had done that where we'd be today," he said. "There would be
no ISIS. There would be no al-Qaeda operating in Iraq. He was ahead of his
time on that, and I think everybody today agrees he was right."

In a speech to the Human Rights Campaign on Friday, Biden also touted his
decision to come out in support of gay marriage before Obama in 2012, a
move that annoyed the White House at the time. Clinton didn't publicly
embrace marriage equality until after she left the State Department.

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Yet more than any policy position, Harpootlian argues, Biden's advantage
resides in his ability to contrast himself favorably to Clinton just by
virtue of his background and his personality. Until he became vice
president, and even as a senator riding an Amtrak train back-and-forth to
Delaware several days a week, Biden "lived a very moderate, middle-class
life," Harpootlian said. Not so for Clinton:

"Hillary Clinton is surrounded by this cocoon of political operatives.
She hasn’t got a cup of coffee in the morning that wasn’t delivered to her
by somebody on a silver platter for the last 25 years. So you contrast the
two, and Joe Biden has a gut sense for what is best for the average of us,
the average person."

If Biden excels at anything, it's coming across as authentic. But as many
Democrats clamor for Clinton to claim her place in history as the first
woman president, there's no evidence of a similar yearning for Biden. He's
been on the national stage even longer than Clinton, and many of the
Democrats cool to a Clinton candidacy want a fresher face, not another
Beltway veteran. Biden's first presidential bid, in 1988, collapsed amid a
plagiarism scandal, and when he took on Clinton and Obama 20 years later he
didn't make it beyond a 5th place finish in the Iowa caucuses. She is
clobbering him in early polling, and you get the sense from watching
Biden's efforts to keep his name in the running that he simply wants to be
wanted. Democrats "love old Joe, Uncle Joe, but I just don't see any
movement for him at all," said Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political
science at Iowa State University. He noted that even Bernie Sanders, the
liberal Vermont senator, drew a more enthusiastic crowd when he appeared in
Iowa last month. When Biden showed up, Schmidt said, "the reaction was a
fairly large yawn."

It may well be that Biden doesn't run at all. He's still the vice president
for another two years, and frequent travel—whether to early primary states
or any others—is part of the job. His friends say he genuinely believes the
Obama economic record hasn't gotten enough credit, and his desire to tell
that story is, in part, fueling his road tour this year. Yet if he did jump
into the race, it wouldn't surprise some of his longtime supporters.
Harpootlian recalled (as he initially told the *Wall Street Journal*
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-stays-relevant-for-presidential-run-1424638769>)
that when Biden visited South Carolina in February, he personally urged the
vice president to run in 2016. "He gave me a big hug, and a big wink, and
he said, we’re going to talk about that," he said. Biden, Harpootlian said,
"was ebullient."


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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