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Are You Ready for President Biden? - The Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/19/are-you-ready-for-president-biden.html

ARE YOU READY FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN?

If these were ordinary times, a happy warrior like Joe Biden would be first
out of the starting gate in the race for president. It would be so easy;
politicking is what he loves to do.

But with Hillary Clinton so dominant in the polls, Biden is hanging back,
watching and waiting to see if maybe there’s an opening. He’s telling
supporters in the early states that he’ll decide in the next four weeks, or
by end of summer.

On that thin thread, Draft Biden 2016, a SuperPAC designed to draft him
into the race, is lining up endorsements in Iowa, the first contest, and
organizing house parties and meet ups across the country, from Maryland to
Alaska.

“Our goal is to have one party in each state, including Alaska,” says
executive director Will Pierce.

“I just like to say that. I’ve been doing national campaigns for years, and
I never heard anybody say that. Support for the vice president is strong,
even in the last frontier!”

Pierce did advance work for Obama in ’08 and ’12, but he’s a novice at
fundraising, the coin of the realm for ’16. He says Draft Biden has one or
two major donors, and is on track to hit half a million by the end of the
quarter when contributions are reported to the FEC.

This is chump change in presidential politics.

What Draft Biden hopes to generate is enthusiasm, and it’s priceless.
Pierce, 26, and his communications director, Ahmed Khan, are millennials,
and the “I’m Ridin With Biden” bumper stickers you can get for five bucks
are pretty cool.

The vice president is wearing his trademark aviator sunglasses and driving
a Corvette, the image rendered in psychedelic colors like the iconic “Hope”
poster in ’08 of Barack Obama.

“I have nothing but respect for her (Hillary Clinton), but eight years ago,
she was inevitable, and look what happened. It’s like the play offs, you
want to make sure your candidate is ready,” says Pierce. Watching the
parade of GOP hopefuls at the Faith and Freedom Summit in Iowa earlier this
month, a Draft Biden supporter said jokingly that he wanted the podium
rental business when the Republicans were in town.

“Our goal is to have one party in each state, including Alaska,” says
executive director Will Pierce.

The commercial interests and the enthusiasm that is generated by a
competitive campaign is what a lot of politics is about especially in the
early contests. Iowa State Senator Tony Bisignano says he would rather
Biden decide to run and not bother with the draft, that Iowa needs him to
get people interested and young people excited. Bisignano has supported
Biden since his first run for the presidency in 1988, and again in 2008
“I’ve taken him everywhere from the state fair to church. Everyone loves
Joe.” A recent Quinnipiac poll of Iowa Democratic caucus goers puts
Biden’s favorability rating at 79 percent. Even with the secret service,
Bisignano notes that Biden is able to “bust loose.”

“We’re not having a contest, we’re having a coronation,” Bisignano says,
and that’s a hardship for Iowa Democrats. With a Republican governor, two
Republican senators, and a Republican House, the only body the Democrats
control is the Iowa senate, and that’s by the closest of margins (26 –
24). To build excitement, they need competition. “I don’t think Clinton’s
brief appearances here are going to cut it,” says Bisignano.

Iowa Democrat Jim Lykam agrees, that’s why he agreed to sign a letter along
with several other Iowa lawmakers urging Biden to run.

Lykam, a long-time Biden supporter, said when the veep is in town Biden
will have the secret service call ahead that he wants to see Lykam, which
makes the eight-term Davenport lawmaker feel pretty special. In their last
conversation about 2016, Biden said, “Jim, you’re going to be one of the
first to know,” a promise the veep no doubt has made to countless others
who consider him their friend.

Primary fights can get very bitter and personal, yet what’s most striking
about the Draft Biden effort is how civil everything seems to be, at least
so far. If Biden declines to get into the race, Draft Biden ‘16 will
support Clinton, no question. The doubts that emerge around Clinton for
these Democrats center on her struggle to relate to voters in the same way
her husband is able to do, and that Biden does so easily.

“For her, it’s like having to join a fraternity or a sorority, there’s
pledge week and hell week,” says Dick Harpootlian, former Democratic Party
chairman in South Carolina, who tells of taking six hours to play golf with
Biden because the veep felt an obligation to chat up everyone on the
course.

“He relates to everybody,” says Harpootlian, who is advising Draft Biden
‘16.

Once a self-described “vociferous” Clinton supporter -- he went
door-to-door in New Hampshire with Bill in ’92 -- he chose Obama in early
’07 despite his historical ties with the Clintons. “It’s more than
charisma; it’s more than the ability to emote; it’s the ability to speak to
25,000 people and have every one of them feel you’re speaking to them.
Clinton had it, Bush had it, Obama had it, Reagan had it. Joe Biden has it
-- he can bring people to tears. She ain’t got it.”

After cornering the market on enthusiasm in the last two elections, these
Democrats, all men perhaps not coincidentally, worry that the promise of
electing the first woman president may not be enough to rally an electorate
groomed by cable television and social media to expect the raw emotion of
political combat. But it may be enough to deter Biden.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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