The former vice president slogs through a rough stretch as he considers a third bid for the White House.
There Are So Many Crazy, Stupid Presidential Candidates On The Libs Hot List.
There's Even A Dirt Eating Turd Feeding Maniac Who Needs To
Be In A Mental Institution, Not Running For President of The USA.
Also, A Pervert Who Is Planning To Run For The Highest Office.
Joe Biden is enduring the roughest stretch of any candidate in the
Democratic presidential primary, and he’s not even a candidate yet.
In a two-week period where his attempts to smooth a path into the
2020 race only seemed to underscore the obstacles confronting his
prospective candidacy, the former vice president got a concentrated dose
of what’s in store for him if he chooses to embark on a third run for
the White House.
The hardest hit came Friday, when Lucy Flores, Nevada’s Democratic
nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014, stepped forward to say she was
made uncomfortable by Biden’s attentions that year when he was too
physical with her at a campaign event.
“He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head,” Flores wrote in a publication called The Cut. “My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused.”
From that encounter to his ongoing apology tour for the way he
handled sexual harassment allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas to
an awkward float about a possible running mate to mounting questions
about his son’s business dealings in Ukraine, Biden has been reminded in
short order of the lingering questions he’ll need to address.Namely,
whether there is a place for a 76-year-old white male career politician
in a historically broad and diverse field of candidates, and whether
his long career in public service has left him with a record that is out
of sync with a party that’s rapidly moving leftward.
“Biden’s record is at odds with where the Democratic party is
in 2020,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive consultant who advised
Cynthia Nixon's primary campaign against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“Primaries are tough, and Joe Biden, when you’re this old and running
for president, you have a pretty long record for people to go through.”
Biden’s spokesman, Bill Russo, indicated that Friday’s allegation was a surprise.
“Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him
at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time
uncomfortable,” Russo said in a written statement, “nor do they recall
what she describes.”
But a picture
from the event also shows Biden also burying his nose in the hair of
actress and activist Eva Longoria. Katz, a former staffer in the U.S.
Senate — where Biden had served for 36 years before becoming President
Obama’s vice president in 2009 — said it was easy to believe Flores’
accusations.
“The thing that’s so challenging for team Biden is that everything
that Lucy Flores said seems very, very true,” Katz said. “There’s
literally highlight reels of Biden, whether it’s with world leaders or
granddaughters of incoming members of Congress, doing things that seem a
little off — on camera.”
Cristobal Alex, a Biden adviser referenced anonymously in Flores’ account, said in a statement
that he felt “sucker-punched and surprised” when he read the essay. He
contended that Flores misrepresented a private conversation with him and
that her recollection of the event did not match his.
Still, the rise of the #MeToo movement, and a trove of videos and
photos have placed Biden under fresh scrutiny. While Biden’s Democratic
critics make sure to add that there’s no comparison with the record of
President Trump — who has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and once said in a hot-mic moment
that he could grab and kiss women because “when you’re a star, they let
you do it” — they also concede the focus on Biden’s overly familiar
stylewill make it more difficult to draw a sharp contrast with Trump.
Yet that isn’t all Biden is contending with. Three days before Flores
went public, Biden was busy expressing regret for his treatment of
another woman of color involving a different sexual harassment issue:
The 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings he chaired in 1991, in
which Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of improper behavior.
“She paid a terrible price. She was abused through the hearing,”
Biden said of Hill during the Biden Courage Awards ceremony in New York.
“To this day, I regret I couldn’t get her the kind of hearing she
deserved.”
The attempts to tackle the Anita Hill issue, however, have so far
failed to put the issue behind him — despite what amount to public
apologies, Biden continues to draw criticism for not taking personal
responsibility for his handling of the hearings, and for not apologizing
directly to Hill.
Democratic pollster Joel Benenson, who was the chief strategist for
Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, noted that “the
public is going to be the ultimate arbiter of whether the regret and
whether what he says on this issue is sufficient.”
Sandwiched between those two flaps was a third concerning 2018
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, who appeared on
two television shows to shoot down rumors she would join Biden’s ticket as a running mate before he cinched the nomination.
The trial balloon, which appeared to come from Biden’s inner circle,
didn’t have the intended effect. Far from generating excitement about
the prospect of introducing an element of youth and diversity to his
prospective bid, the float smacked of desperation.
A Biden spokesman denied that there were “discussions on a pre-cooked ticket,” calling them ”false, plain and simple.”
Benenson sounded surprised by the rumors that Biden advisors wanted to pick Abrams as a running mate before he even announced.
“Voters ultimately do not like gimmicks. They also, I believe, don’t
like the presumption of announcing your vice presidential choice before
you’re the nominee,” Benenson said. “Iowa and New Hampshire are retail
politics on steroids. And for you to suggest that you are looking past
them and deciding who your vice president should be? I think it plays
wrong.”
Republicans were gleeful at the prospect of Biden either making the
move or being so flat-footed that he didn’t suppress the rumors fast
enough because it made him look weak.
“This is consultant malpractice,” said Florida GOP Congressman Matt
Gaetz, a top Trump defender and surrogate. “Either they actually
considered this as a trial balloon and didn’t realize how bad it made
Biden look or they didn’t get in front of it to shoot it down because
they wanted it to be true ... We hope he gets in the race and we hope
he’s the Democrats’ nominee.”
Republicans and Democrats alike are already laying the groundwork to
face Biden by examining the business deals of his son, Hunter Biden,
when Biden was vice president. It’s an issue of such grave concern to
Joe Biden, who lost his other son Beau Biden to cancer, that he has told
close associates it’s a major factor in deciding whether to run.
To start off the week, the conservative website One America News Network featured a report
Monday about Hunter Biden’s ties to a Ukrainian oligarch and a
natural-gas company in 2014, an arrangement that was also criticized a
year later in a New York Times editorial.
As with the allegations lodged by Flores against Biden, the former
vice president must not only determine how to respond, but also how to
answer critics who will say Hunter Biden’s business interests make it
harder for Biden as a nominee to contrast his record with Trump on the
question of ties to Russia.
Trump’s defenders, who have blamed Ukrainian intelligence for some of
the Trump-Russia stories, say they look forward to making Democrats pay
for it if and when Biden enters the race.
“I’m pretty confident Joe Biden will be called out by his
presidential primary competitors for his son getting rich off a corrupt
Ukrainian oligarch’s gas company,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump
campaign consultant and top Trump defender.
He pointed to a connection with Trump’s former campaign manager that should make Democrats uneasy.
“Wait till they find out Hunter Biden’s oligarch is from the same
political party Paul Manafort consulted in Ukraine,” he said. “Old
‘Lunch Bucket Joe’ would be smart to not even get in the race.” Alex Thompson contributed to this report.
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