Sorry, folks: Joe Biden is not running for president

By Paul Waldman August 3 at 11:53 AM

I have some bad news for the media: Joe Biden is not running for president.

-snip-

Like most politicians who have been around for a long time at a high level, Biden has a collection of satellites orbiting him — current and former staffers, friends, fundraisers, and the like — many of whom would surely like him to take one last shot at the big desk. But he has raised no money, hired no staff, done nothing that would suggest that he’s actually contemplating it seriously.

And then there’s this fact: it’s a terrible idea.

Biden is in some ways a skilled politician, but he happens to be abysmal at running for president. The first time he ran, in 1988, his campaign imploded when it was discovered he had plagiarized parts of some of his speeches from British politician Neil Kinnock — and then other instances of plagiarism, political and academic, emerged as well. (It’s an interesting historical footnote that when a video juxtaposing Biden’s and Kinnock’s speeches was discovered to have been produced by Dukakis campaign chief John Sasso, the press found the tactic so scandalous that Sasso was forced to resign. It was a more innocent age, I suppose.)

But it wasn’t like Biden was headed for the nomination in 1988 anyway. He was at best in the middle of a very large pack. When he ran again 20 years later, he did even worse. He came in a weak fifth in Iowa, garnering just under one percent of the vote, and promptly pulled out of the race. It seemed that voters’ response to him tended to run along the lines of, “He seems like a nice guy, but I’m voting for someone else.”

Biden’s time as vice president hasn’t been particularly notable, other than to reinforce his image as a lovable yet unpredictable guy, sort of a nutty uncle who’s a blast to have around because of all the crazy things he says, but to whom you wouldn’t necessarily want to trust the nuclear codes (and The Onion’s version of Biden may be the single best comedic character the Obama years have produced).

-snip-

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/03/sorry-folks-joe-biden-is-not-running-for-president/?