Biden 2020? [Bill Scher / Politico]

link:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/23/joe-biden-president-2020-anti-populism-215638

Biden 2020? My opinion – “Eh.” A bit too conservative for my vote.

However, he does have a couple of things going for him. Although he was senator for Delaware, he is originally from the state of PA – a swing state with a significant working class character, now the most significant rising natural gas producer in the US, and of course, one that the D party lost. He is a long-time power player in Washington, and would probably have major advantage in the Dem primaries – as we learned, the D primaries are not 100% democratic, primarily due to superdelegates.

He will of course do better than Clinton did, but alas, that is true of nearly any nationally known Democrat.

Biden did support NAFTA and TPP, and as long-time chair of the senate foreign relations committee, he could be categorized relative to his peers as a “responsible” hawk, which will be little comfort to residents of countries receiving the benevolence of such policy in the future. But a marginal improvement nonetheless.

With all that, it would take some serious browbeating and scare tactics to get the progressive and independent vote. Biden is also vulnerable to the classic “beltway insider” stigma, likely more than happy to play along with big business on deregulation and economic inequality issues.

However, after 3 more years of Trump, being a relatively standard but experienced DC insider may well become a positive – just about anyone other than Trump will look good in comparison. Question is, in this scenario – who would the Republicans run?

 

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