There is an unmistakable scent in the air. It is that of a wounded animal, and Washington is full of seasoned predators that both recognize it and are driven by instinct to pursue it to its source.
The unending scandals that plague Hillary Clinton’s campaign continue to evolve. Last week, two inspectors general referred her behavior to the Department of Justice for investigation. This week, the FBI is talking to her attorney about the likely fact that he, a civilian, is presently in possession of the classified documents the former secretary of state mishandled. It’s all taking a toll on Clinton’s political standing. In just the last month, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed Hillary Clinton’s favorability rating moving 15 points in the wrong direction. It’s only natural that a slightly less fringe figure than a self-described socialist non-entity in the Senate would entertain a challenge to the once inevitable Hillary Clinton, and the most obvious Democrat to do that would be the sitting Vice President of the United States. It is a testament to the threat he represents to Clinton that a boorish and tactless campaign of emotional manipulation has been the response to Joe Biden’s presidential trial balloon.
It is telling that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd inspired fits of overwrought indignation and feigned effrontery from pro-Hillary circles when she had the temerity to read and reiterate the well-reported anecdote that, before the late Beau Biden passed on, he had urged his father to run for the White House one more time. Dowd’s column did, however, contain an extra flourish that had not been previously reported. “He tried to make his father promise to run,” Dowd wrote of the Beau Biden’s deathbed request, “arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.” That stung, and it is not hard to see why.
If Biden wanted to get into this presidential race, he would need more justification than simply Hillary Clinton’s floundering campaign. After all, the presidency has been her due for a decade and a half; Clinton has been groomed, the field has cleared, and she is nothing short of destined to shatter the glass ceiling for all women, the liberal mythology goes. If he had entered the race in June, Democrats might have resented Biden for complicating Hillary Clinton’s campaign. As Jonathan Tobin noted, however, the Beau Biden tale provides the vice president with a compelling narrative that he could claim propelled him into the race against Clinton, one that even Clinton’s grassroots supporters would intuitively understand and accept. He is not in the race to thwart Clinton’s aspirations, but to fulfill one last obligation to his beloved boy.
The urgency of the threat to Clinton’s campaign posed by Biden is perhaps most evident in a striking brushback pitch hurled in his direction by Biden’s “friends,” as reported by the New York Times. In the report, the Times cast aside even the pretense of subtlety to warn Biden that he has established a nice legacy for himself, and it would be a terrible shame if something were to happen to it.
Those supporters, in the White House and the Senate, and within the political circles he has moved in for decades, fear that the legacy Mr. Biden has built as an effective partner who took on tough jobs for President Obama, not to mention the deep reservoir of public good will and sympathy he has amassed in his poignant handling of personal tragedies, could be sacrificed in the pursuit of an unsuccessful challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
They fret that Mr. Biden, as well known for his undisciplined, sometimes self-immolating comments as he is for his charm on the trail, could endanger Mr. Obama’s own legacy by injuring Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and causing his party to lose control of the White House.
That’s not merely patronizing condescension you detect; it’s abject fear. Only a true friend would cautiously advise a compatriot to swear off the brutal and unsatisfying process of running for the presidency, but no comrade would take that advice anonymously to the New York Times. No true friend would contend to reporters that they fear their compatriot’s judgment is hopelessly clouded by his son’s death and that his impaired decision making could lead to the destruction not only of his own stature but of his political party’s electoral prospects. The latter’s fate much less so than the former is the principle concern of those alleged “friends.”
Biden has long said that he would make his mind up on whether to run for the White House again this month, and he has a lot to consider. Are there enough uncommitted Democratic donors on the sidelines to finance a run? Can he build the organization necessary to compete in and get his name on the ballot in all 50 states at this late date? Is there a natural Biden constituency among Democratic primary voters who would otherwise not gravitate toward either Clinton or a far-left protest candidate like Bernie Sanders? These and other issues, in as much as the notion that Biden owes it to his son’s memory to run again, will dominate the vice president’s family’s thinking as they ponder another White House bid.
What should not influence Joe Biden’s deliberations are the juvenile and transparent efforts in the media to use his son’s death to emotionally manipulate the vice president either into or out of another White House run. If this episode has demonstrated anything, it is that nothing is out of bounds when Hillary Clinton’s ambitions are threatened. Not even a father’s grief over the loss of a child.
