Biden struts as his rivals chew the mud

Posted On Dec 29, 2019 By admin With Comments Off

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MASON CITY, Iowa — Joe Biden’s feeling awfully confident these days.

The onetime vice president thinks he doesn’t need Barack Obama to win the primary. He seemed to mock the ideas that there’s enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren or that Pete Buttigieg came up with his own schemes. And he claimed to be untroubled by the possibility of Mike Bloomberg dropping$ 1 billion to beat him out for the nomination.

Biden is dripping with confidence as he tours Iowa two months before the state’s caucuses, after endless projections his candidacy would have crumbled by now. Instead, the candidates who pitched themselves as Biden alternatives are the ones dropping.

On Tuesday, it was Kamala Harris, who just the summer months had so humiliated Biden on the national debate stage that analysts asked whether colors supporters would ditch the former vice president in droves. Instead, as Biden departed an event in northern center Iowa, reporters exclaimed questions at him about whether he’d still consider Harris as his running mate.

Earlier this week, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who joined the primary with the promise of capturing moderate voters who felt Biden was too old and out of touch, folded his presidential campaign.

The chest-thumping two months before the Feb. 3 caucuses is a risky approach for Biden, given the fluidity of the race, especially in Iowa, where Biden has steadily lost floor in polling since January. And historically, Iowa voters have demonstrated their willingness to procreate last-minute shifts, descending away from a safe bet or getting behind a relative uncharted, just before the caucuses.

But despite his wobbly debate operations, lackluster fundraising and verbal accidents, Biden is still standing. And nationally, he’s still conducting in the ballots.

“Biden has every reason to be confident about his positioning. He’s been durable and somewhat Teflon, ” said Andrew Gillum, a Democrat who descended precisely short of acquire Florida’s governorship last year. “Probably feels even better with Harris out. Now the Veepstakes can begin.”

even

Addressing worries about the Biden team’s war chest, campaign manager Greg Schultz on Monday tweeted that the campaign had raised more coin in October and November than it did in all of the final quarter. Still, Biden has lagged Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Warren in fundraising; the latter two specially have built out much larger online grassroots enterprises than Biden.

“Biden’s been in the scoot since April, and despite ups and downs, and countless errors and indiscretions, and attacks by many of the other nominees, he’s still standing as the overall frontrunner, ” said Garry South, a Democratic political consultant from California who long expressed doubts about his home state senator’s presidential bid. “So there’s something to crow about, I would say.”

At least some of Biden’s self-assuredness is about “Medicare for All.” Biden noted in an interview Monday on his safarus bus that Democrat doubted his candidacy early on because he would not embrace a terminated remaking of the health care system. Now, he said, other candidates are paying a price in the canvas for embracing Medicare for All and are moving toward his contrive.

Biden immediately objected when he was asked to lay out his itinerary in Iowa thrown his rage divergence with other campaigners, including Warren.

“You don’t be understood that[ warmth] with Warren. Stop kidding a kidder, OK? Come on, worker. Give me a fragment, ” Biden said. At first Biden said the enthusiasm for Warren was lacking in Iowa but then he lent: “And everywhere, look at the polling everywhere. Tell me — tell me where this great enthusiasm has attested itself? ”

Biden partly moved back those remarks after an occasion in Mason City on Tuesday.

“I think there is enthusiasm for her, ” Biden said. “The point I was doing was that I don’t fantasize the bulk of the passion in the Democratic Party is for Medicare for All. There is enthusiasm for people who support that . … I don’t think that is where the center of the party is or the left or the right of the party is.”

Another looming threat for Biden is Bloomberg, a billionaire who in a matter of weeks dropped virtually $60 million on tv.

When asked on Monday how he felt about Bloomberg’s candidacy, and the opportunities that he would deplete hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money, Biden essentially shrugged it off.

“Look at the other billionaire, what has he spent, 35 million horses? OK, well, show me what it’s done, ” Biden said, referring to Tom Steyer, who simply are eligible for the December Democratic debate. “You can’t sit and say if someone’s going to spend $200 – $300 — up to a billion of their own money — you can’t say, ‘Don’t worry about that at all.’ तर … we’ll see. I don’t discount it, but I don’t waste any time thinking about it. Nothing I can do about that. Zero.”

Iowa

Biden’s confidence likewise remains on his position in South Carolina and a raft of Southern Super Tuesday territories that include most diverse people and more conservative Democrats. To that outcome, Biden said Monday, if he faltered in Iowa, he could still win the nomination. But if he prevailed Iowa, Biden suggested he’d be almost unstoppable.

And Biden said he doesn’t see anyone even close to him in South Carolina polling who could upsurge even though it is prevailed Iowa.

“There is no one else who is in a position to all of a sudden to do what Barack[ Obama] was able to do, ” he said. “I think even if we didn’t do well in Iowa, we’re still acces in the game in terms of where we are on Super Tuesday and where we’ll be in South Carolina and Nevada. I feel confident about those two, and I don’t see something essentially shifting.”

“The reason why it’s so important in Iowa — if the reverse happened, if I were to come in here and win this … and then do well in New Hampshire. Then what stops it? ”

Even a now-former Harris campaign aide said Biden was more resilient than her crew predicted.

“Look, Biden is a lot tougher than all of us uttered ascribe for, ” the aide said. “And the fact is that the polls don’t lie. He’s got solid the assistance provided by the[ African American] parish. Now is he unbeatable? No. But I don’t witness Cory[ Booker] or Deval[ Patrick] becoming it or significantly trimming into his support with African Americans.”