UPDATE:
In last night’s Washington Post, David Ignatius claims, “Joe Biden is the best candidate to beat Trump.”
Surprisingly, he starts his opinion piece as follows: “Joe Biden’s limitations as a presidential candidate are so obvious that they’re almost a litany: He’s too old, too white, too male, too touchy-feely, too loquacious.”
Ignatius concludes with some additional Joe Biden “limitations” but, most important, with an attribute the present president would generally not be credited with: “With all his blarney and sometimes tedious speechifying, [Joe Biden is] obviously, uncontestably a decent person.”
But then he writes:
[Joe Biden] would be far from an ideal president, let alone a Democratic candidate. Maybe in one of those blessed miracles of American democracy that produced our greatest presidents, someone else will emerge who’s younger, smarter, more representative of a diverse electorate.
But right now, Biden looks most like the person who could beat Trump. And that’s Job One. But he has one huge plus: He may be the person who could move President Trump out of the White House
The more than 600 words in-between, tell a story, not necessarily about Joe Biden, but more a horror story about the present occupant of the White House, including, “Democrats…should ask whether impeachment in the House will help oust Trump or deepen his support…” and, of course the Mueller Report.
Please read the full piece here.
Original Post:
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump in 2020.
Watch the video below, where Biden invokes the white supremacist march through Charlottesville, Va., where a young woman was senselessly killed, and about which Trump commented that there “very fine people on both sides.”
About that event, Biden says, “I knew the threat to our nation was unlike any I’d ever seen in my lifetime.”
Joe Biden adds,
It’s time for respected leadership on the world stage—and dignified leadership at home. It’s time for equal opportunity, equal rights, and equal justice. It’s time for an economy that rewards those who actually do the work. It’s time for a president who will stand up for all of us.
Trump responded in his traditional taunting, insulting and insolent way, “calling Mr. Biden ‘Sleepy Joe’ and deriding the Democratic field as having ‘demented ideas’”:
Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty – you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.