Delaware Senator Joe Biden has thrown his hat in the ring in the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination sweepstakes — ensuring it will be a lively race, indeed:
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said yesterday he plans to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 unless he decides later this year that he has little chance of winning.
“My intention is to seek the nomination,” Biden said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I know I’m supposed to be more coy with you. I know I’m supposed to tell you, you know, that I’m not sure. But if, in fact, I think that I have a clear shot at winning the nomination by this November or December, then I’m going to seek the nomination.”
Biden said he plans to spend the year road-testing a message to see whether his views are compatible with a majority of Democrats while evaluating whether he can raise the money needed to compete in a race that is widely expected to include Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a prodigious fundraiser.
“I’ve proceeded since last November as if I were going to run,” he said. “I’m quite frankly going out, seeing whether I can gather the kind of support.”
Biden is the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has used that pulpit to launch increasingly caustic criticisms of President Bush’s policy in Iraq. Yesterday, he again accused the administration of failing to level with Americans about the situation there, saying the insurgency is far from being in its last throes, as administration officials have suggested….
Biden, who opposes setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, said that, without changes in U.S. policy, the United States faces failure in Iraq….Biden says he believes that national security issues will be central to the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, as they were in 2004, and that his experience in that arena gives him a possible advantage over other potential candidates.
There are several reason why Biden’s entrance into the race assures that it won’t be a proforma coronation of Hillary Clinton — or any other candidate — but a bitterly fought contest. And probably not fought on the sweetest level.
For one thing, as Glenn Reynolds notes:
With Joe Biden running for president, we’re likely to hear more about the rather lame plagiarism scandal that sunk him in 1988.
You can read a defense of Biden in that role, from my book (with Peter Morgan), The Appearance of Impropriety, if you like. I think that Biden was shafted by the Dukakis campaign, with help from the press, and that the whole flap was silly.
Reyolds has a point for one reason: since 1988 American politics has gotten even more TOXIC where the interplay of ideas is constantly trumped by efforts to take out a candidate via personal attacks and demonization.
Here are some of Biden’s strengths and weaknesses:
STRENGTHS: Appeals to some Democrats on the left, some centrists and even some libertarian Republicans who might vote for a Democratic centrist who is relatively strong on foreign affairs. Has reputation as an independent thinker. In 1988, before the mini-scandal that led to him dropping out, he was touted as a charismatic politician who had a decent shot at the nomination. Good ties to business community. An alternative to those who want a more centrist candidate but fear Hillary Clinton would be too divisive and has too much political baggage.
WEAKNESSES: Came under fierce fire for doing the bidding of credit card companies and banks in recent Congressional battles (if you look at your credit card statements you’ll see that Delaware is not-so-coincidentally where some key ones are based). Will go up against the Clintonistas’ political apparatus. Is hated by many liberals who view him in terms of the Democratic party as conservatives view what they call RINOS (Republican In Name Only). Many liberals consider him a sell-out and an obstacle to the party developing a cohesive progressive alternative to Republicanism.
So Biden presents the Democrats with the same option — and dilemma — facing the Republicans.
If he got the nomination he could probably expand upon the party’s 2004 base but he’d also lose some liberals in the same way that if Republicans move more to the center they could lose some social conservatives.
Strongest point: is quite media savvy. Reporters love a good quote and Biden has given them good, solid ones over the years. Weakest point: You need party activists to win primaries and his supporters may not have the fire in their bellies needed to counter supporters of some of the others.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.