The Case For Biden

Suppose you’re a GM preparing for the NFL draft and you have a simple algorithm that sorts college quarterbacks into two groups. In Group 1, historically, 35 percent of quarterbacks have become star players. In Group 2, 3 percent have.

A scout comes to you, says he’s evaluated every factor, more than the algorithm considers, and you should draft a Group 2 quarterback ahead of a Group 1 guy.

Do you buy it? Maybe. But that’s putting a lot of faith in the scout. The algorithm tells you the Group 1 player is about 12 times more likely to succeed. Perhaps you can overcome that prior with a deeper analysis, but the circumstances should be special.

The upshot: I think my tiers should align more closely with the polling. Maybe we can liberally scramble candidates around by half a tier, but more than that should require a really solid argument. Looking at it that way, Biden should probably be alone in the penthouse level since he clearly has the best polling. You should also adjust polls for name recognition, however, and once you do, it’s clear that Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have the next-best polling.

Former Vice President Joe Biden raised $6.3 million in the first 24 hours since announcing he was running for president, according to his campaign. The high number notably edges out Sen. Bernie Sanders, who raised around $6 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign, and Beto O'Rourke, who received $6.1 million.

Biden has received some criticism for turning to wealthy donors to help fund his campaign. The former vice president attended a private fundraiser in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hosted by Comcast's chief lobbyist on Thursday evening, just hours after he announced that he was running for president. However, Biden's campaign boasted that 97 percent of donations were under $200 in a campaign email.

The email also said that the campaign had received donations from all 50 states and that the average donation was $41. Approximately 97,000 people contributed to the campaign in the first 24 hours, and 65,000 of those individuals were new donors who did not come from existing email lists.

"We are incredibly heartened by the energy and enthusiasm displayed throughout the country for Joe Biden," said Kate Bedingfield, communications director for the campaign. "It is crystal clear from the last 24 hours that Americans are ready for dignified leadership, someone who can restore the soul of the nation, rebuild the middle class so everyone gets a fair shot and unite the country behind the core values we all believe in. That person is Joe Biden, and today's announcement demonstrates Americans agree."

Biden started the race at a fundraising disadvantage, since he was unable to raise money during the first quarter of the year like most of the other candidates. However, Biden raised more than all but four of the other candidates in his first 24 hours as a candidate than most did in the entire first quarter.

His campaign is likely to be a fundraising juggernaut to rival that of Sanders, who raised $18 million in the first quarter. However, Biden may be more reliant on wealthy donors than Sanders, whose average donation was $20.

The only other candidates who have raised over $6 million so far are Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, O'Rourke and Sanders.

Anybody can get that—if they promise favors.

It is only significant when the money only comes from voters.

If you believe that society should allow everyone to have equal access to an education...

...a free education up to 12th grade

The promise is this free public education is a stepping stone to the equalizer of college.

You Hillary people can snort over cocktails, though, and refer to an education as ‘ponies’ for the average people.

'Ponies' is the analogy to a special prize, not deserved, popularized by Hillary and repeated, laughingly by her Republican Democrat loyalists.

You may not have said it, but your rhetoric supports it.

Bootstrap Democrats like Biden and Pelosi who believe poor people are in situations of their own doing, millennials are lazy and entitled (the irony!), and free education, single payer healthcare, and expungement of small marijuana ‘crimes’ are anti-American.

Hours before Joe Biden hits the campaign trail for the first time as a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, the former vice president landed his first major endorsement.

The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) announced Monday morning that they’re endorsing Biden, who has long and strong ties to the union and to the organized labor movement in general.

"On behalf of the International Association of Fire Fighters, I'm proud to announce that we stand with Joe Biden and endorse his candidacy for President of the United States," IAFF general president Harold Schaitberger highlighted in a video.

Schaitberger emphasized that "Joe's a lot like our firefighters. He's a problem solver who cares deeply about America and committed to making our country better. He's one of the staunchest advocates for working families.”

The endorsement by the IAFF – which sat on the sidelines in the 2016 general election – is the first by a major union this presidential cycle.

The IAFF’s backing comes hours before Biden was scheduled to give the first major speech of his presidential campaign – his third White House bid – at a Teamsters banquet hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The event kicks off the former vice president’s six-state swing over three weeks. That trip is expected to end with a major speech in Philadelphia.

The start and finish of his initial campaign swing in Pennsylvania is no surprise. The state – long a crucial battleground in presidential elections – was one of the key working-class Rust Belt states Republican President Trump flipped in the 2016 election to help him capture the White House.

And while Biden has long lived in Delaware and represented that state for nearly four decades in the Senate, he was born and spent his early years in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the Keystone State has always remained special to him. The stops in Pennsylvania are meant to signal that Biden is determined to recapture working-class voters swayed by Trump’s populist message in 2016. Just a few days before he launched his campaign last week, Biden traveled to Boston to support and address striking Stop and Shop supermarket employees.

Biden gave a major hint of his impending presidential run as he spoke in front of the IAFF at their annual convention in Washington, D.C., in March. Biden was greeted with chants of “run Joe, run” as he took the podium.
A few minutes later, during his keynote address, Biden said: “I appreciate the energy you showed when I got up here. Save it a little longer. I may need it in a few weeks.”

The comment brought a standing ovation from the audience.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Biden joked. “Be careful what you wish for.”

While there’s been a decline in union membership in recent decades, they still remain a powerful political force, especially in Democratic Party politics. The IAFF, which was formed a century ago, includes more than 316,000 members across more than 3,200 affiliate organizations. Its political action committee is one of the most active and potent in the country.

President Trump's decision to ramp up his attacks on Joe Biden suggests he views the former vice president as a major threat at the outset of the 2020 race.

While Trump's team sees flaws in Biden, it considers his broad name recognition, ties to former President Obama and appeal to white, working-class voters as potential advantages for him in a general election match-up.

The president believes he can weaken Biden's chances of winning the Democratic nomination by bloodying him early in the primary, even though Trump's campaign operation prefers not to elevate specific Democrats by singling them out for criticism.

Trump's objective in launching an onslaught against Biden during his campaign launch is "kneecapping him right out of the gates," according to a former White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss the president's thinking.

"As of today, he's the strongest Democrat nominee," the official said Monday, adding that while media coverage has focused heavily on the former vice president, "what the president did by tweeting about Biden today is trying to control and set the narrative ahead of Biden's launch."

Democrats said Trump's attacks prove that Biden would be a tough challenger for the president.

"Clearly, Vice President Biden bugs the president," said Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2016. "I think he's very worried about Pennsylvania and he's probably thinking about Biden's strength there."

Trump swiped at Biden on Twitter four times over the course of 20 minutes on Monday, claiming broad support from rank-and-file union workers just hours before the Democratic candidate held his first campaign rally in the organized-labor bastion of Pittsburgh.

Biden received a key boost ahead of the event by securing an endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters, which sat out the 2016 race.

The president tweeted that he himself would "never get the support of Dues Crazy union leadership" because they "will always support Democrats" even though "the members love Trump."

Within two hours, Biden shot back on Twitter that he is "sick of this President badmouthing unions" and declared that "we need a President who honors them and their work."

Trump's barrage of criticism also cast doubt on Biden's ability to win Pennsylvania, saying the state "is having one of the best economic years in its history" and that "Sleepy Joe" and Obama "didn't do the job and now you have Trump, who is getting it done - big time!"

Pennsylvania is a key battleground state where white, working-class defections from the Democratic Party helped propel Trump to victory in 2016. Biden's decision to stage his kickoff rally there shows he is making an aggressive play to win back those voters in the Keystone State and across the Rust Belt.

"If I'm going to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it's going to happen here," Biden told a cheering crowd inside a Teamsters hall during a speech heavily focused on how he would help the middle class.

People close to Trump say the easiest way to eliminate the threat posed by Biden may be for the former vice president to falter in the Democratic primary.

While the 76-year-old entered the race as the Democratic front-runner, according to several polls, political strategists have questioned whether he will be able to capture the nomination of a party moving further to the left and woo activists yearning for a younger, more diverse face of the party.

Some Trump allies said that by characterizing Biden as a liberal Democrat and a creature of Washington, the president can force him to fight a multifront war as he battles progressive activists who have criticized Biden's ties to Wall Street and major donors.

"There's been a lot of focus on the potential positives of a Joe Biden campaign, but there hasn't been much focus at all on some of his weaknesses," the former White House official said.

In the past month, Trump, 72, has also hit the former vice president over his age and needled him with an edited video that made light of women's accusations of unwanted touching, even though the president has been accused of sexual misconduct.

But Trump's campaign has been wary of attacking individual candidates, with the belief that doing so could help contenders gain traction among voters in the anti-Trump Democratic base.

When asked last week whether Biden is viewed as a threat, a Trump campaign official replied that "it doesn't matter who comes out of the Democrat convention next year," because any candidate would be "saddled with all of the socialist policies they will have adopted in order to win the nomination."

The official raised questions about whether Biden could win the primary, saying "there is no centrist lane in the Democrat primary and anyone who runs as a moderate is doomed."

Democrats think Biden could benefit from being in Trump's crosshairs. The attacks set up a one-on-one political fight that could lift the former vice president above the fray of the crowded Democratic primary field.

Biden made it clear he has his sights set on Trump by launching his campaign last week with a video blasting the president's response to the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and saying the "soul of this nation" is at stake if Trump wins another term.

Few other candidates went after Trump during their campaign rollouts in such a direct way.

A raft of recent surveys show Trump would face a tough reelection bid against Biden in a hypothetical general election match-up.

The latest Hill-HarrisX poll found Biden leading Trump by 6 percentage points among registered voters nationwide. Biden has a 1-point edge over Trump in the red state of Texas, according to a new Emerson College poll of registered voters.

Trump has nonetheless indicated he thinks he would beat Biden if the two were to face off against each other next year, despite the danger Biden poses in the president's Rust Belt stronghold and elsewhere.

"I think we beat him easily," the president said Friday when asked how he would defeat Biden.

But some pro-Trump figures are less certain.

"I think Biden's the most difficult guy for him to run against," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), an informal adviser to Trump, said Sunday on ABC News's "This Week." "If Biden can make his way through the primary and stay on the rails ... he's the toughest one."

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after Biden's announcement on Thursday shows 39% of voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents saying he is their top choice for the nomination, up from 28% who said the same in March.

That puts Biden more than 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- who holds 15% support in the poll -- and roughly 30 points ahead of the next strongest candidate, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (8%).