Dem insiders predict Biden won’t run

When the dust settles after Vice President Joe Biden’s flirtation with a presidential bid, Democratic insiders believe he’ll sit out 2016. 

{mosads}The majority of the more than a dozen party strategists who spoke to The Hill on the condition of anonymity don’t believe either that Biden can surmount the difficulties of pulling together a top-flight organization so close to the Iowa caucuses or that Hillary Clinton has truly fallen low enough to give him a large enough opening. 

“For all the bedwetting Democrat stories, there haven’t been this stampede of people who said they are going to leave the Clinton campaign or are upset,” said a Democratic strategist who worked on multiple presidential campaigns. 

“She still remains very strong nationally and in the primary.” 

Intrigue around a potential Biden bid has swelled amid concerns from some Democrats about her campaign and her standing in the polls that many attribute to the slow drip of controversy surrounding her private email server. 

Clinton’s favorables have dipped to 41 percent in a new Gallup poll, and a recent Quinnipiac poll found that the majority of people associate a negative term with her. 

No Republican has topped her in major national polling outside of a mid-August Fox News poll that showed Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and former Gov. Jeb Bush (Fla.) with leads inside the margin of error. But her lead has narrowed against her GOP rivals. 

And her standing in the first two primary states has dropped substantially. Gone are her 40 percentage point leads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Two recent polls have shown Sanders on top in New Hampshire, his neighboring state, and while most recent Iowa polls have Clinton with a double-digit lead, a late August Des Moines Register poll found Sanders within 7 points.  

“One of the great assets that Biden has is that he’s authentic in a campaign year that really seems to prize authenticity,” one Democratic former presidential strategist said. 

“Fairly or unfairly, Hillary Clinton—people have doubts about how much reality there is there. Nobody thinks there is anything about Joe Biden that isn’t real.” 

But another strategist said Biden’s “best day is today,” in regards to a likely dip in favorability once he reenters electoral politics. 

“As soon as he’s an announced candidate, the scrutiny changes,” she said, noting his penchant for gaffes and the plagiarism scandal that hampered his first presidential bid. Clinton too saw high favorables until she became a candidate.  

Most of the strategists are skeptical that Biden could carve out enough support to play in the early primary states— while his message might have different nuances, he still shares the same Obama-administration backbone with Clinton. 

And Sanders has already cobbled together a significant amount of the progressive and anti-Clinton vote, groups that may not see Biden as a dramatic enough shift away from the status quo. 

“While there appears to be some dissatisfaction among the party, a lot of that is tied up by Bernie Sanders and that is not available to Biden,” said a Democratic strategist who worked on Clinton’s last campaign. 

Less than five months from the Iowa caucuses, Biden has no campaign organization to speak of. He hasn’t formed a “testing the waters committee” and hasn’t led a campaign in almost eight years. Biden doesn’t have the immense personal wealth to finance a bid while infrastructure is assembled.   

For then-Sen. Obama to beat Clinton in 2008, he announced in February 2007. Even then, the race went on for five months before Clinton conceded.   

And while most agree he won’t need to beat Clinton’s massive fundraising numbers, he’ll need a substantial sum to cover the vast apparatus as well as the pricey reality of his campaign travel—as a candidate, his campaign would have to foot the bill for at least a portion of the massive security required for a sitting vice president. 

But the effect of the biggest variable is unknown. Biden is grieving the loss of his oldest son Beau, who died this summer at the age of 46 from brain cancer, and the vice president has said publicly that his decision hinges on his family. 

“The most relevant factor in my decision is whether my family and I will have the emotional energy to run,” he said Thursday in an Atlanta synagogue as he pitched the Iran nuclear deal, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Can I do it? Can my family undertake what is an arduous commitment? … The honest-to-God answer is I just don’t know.”

The prevailing sense is that Biden seems to be torn between his head—which undoubtedly sees a difficult road ahead—and his heart. 

Biden has made no secret of his presidential ambitions, having run for the office twice. And New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported in August that Beau begged his father to run before he died. 

“Your gut probably says for personal reasons and for your own ambitions you should do it, but your head tells you right now it doesn’t look like it would be a winnable race,” the strategist with experience on multiple presidential campaigns said. 

While most predicted Biden would stay on the sidelines, two longtime party strategists gave Biden an unequivocal green light. The pair expressed doubt that the vice president would give up on his lifetime presidential ambitions after eight years down the hall from the Oval Office. 

“There’s no known cure for the condition of wanting to be president,” said another Democratic strategist and presidential campaign veteran. 

“When Hillary had a 57 point lead over [Democrats], he didn’t rule it out, so why rule it out now? There’s no question he wants to be president so the external environment is everything…and that’s a question that looks a lot different than it did three or six months ago.” 

He said that while Clinton has struggled so far, Clinton has always run best when in a competitive race. After losing Iowa in 2008, she dug down and came across more personable on the way to a win in New Hampshire. 

“She is a great candidate when she was in a race that was competitive, she is a horrible candidate in a race that’s not,” he added. 

Both strategists believe the structural concerns are overplayed. 

“Presidential campaigns are much less about resources than people think. How much has Donald Trump raised and he’s lapping the field,” the strategist said. 

“Jeb Bush has $103 million and he’s getting his ass kicked. Hillary has 47 million and as her bank account has swelled, her poll numbers have shrunk.” 

The other strategist, who supported President Obama in 2008, said the odds are better for Biden than they were in 2007. 

“It was more daunting in 2007 than it is in 2016. In 2007, he was just the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee who wanted to run for president against the overwhelming favorite in a big field,” he said. 

“Now he’s a sitting vice president running against someone who has been beaten as the presumptive nominee and is having a tough go at it.” 

Almost all of the strategists agree that a Clinton implosion would almost certainly bring him into the race. 

“The reason I think he’s waiting is he wants to be a savior not a spoiler,” one said. 

But the prevailing wisdom is that while Clinton’s poll numbers are sagging, it’s still too early to sound the alarm bells.

Said one strategist, “For Democrats, he’s becoming break glass in case of emergency. I don’t think it’s an emergency right now.”