Biden feeling a push to take on Trump in 2020
Sources: Former vice president to decide by January
DES MOINES, Iowa — Shortly after Joe Biden boarded a recent flight from Washington to New York, a string of passengers began stopping at his seat in coach to deliver some version of the same message: Run, Joe, run. “We’re with you,” one said, according to a Democratic strategist who happened to be on the plane and witnessed the scene. “You’ve got to do this,” said another.
Biden himself is more conflicted — but he is listening keenly to the supporters pushing him to run for the White House in 2020. Biden is convinced he can beat President Donald Trump, friends and advisers say, and he has given himself until January to deliberate and size up potential competition for the Democratic nomination, according to people who have spoken to the former vice president about his decision-making.
In the meantime, Biden diligently maintains a network of supporters in key states, a group 30 years in the making, while some of those competitors are still making introductions.
Same dilemma
As he makes each careful step, Biden faces the same dilemma. For an elder statesman in a leaderless party, one who long envisioned himself in the top job, the pull toward another presidential bid is strong. But the 75-year-old former vice president must weigh the realities of jumping into a crowded primary full of up-and-comers eager to debate the future of the party.
“He is not someone who needs to run to cement his place in history. He’s not someone who needs to run to feel he’s making a significant contribution to the public discourse and the Democratic Party,” said Anita Dunn, a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “But he is someone who, at the end of the day, feels a great deal of responsibility to listen to those people who are urging him to run.”
Intraparty uncertainty
Biden would likely cast a long shadow, but as a candidate, Biden is not expected to clear what will be a crowded field of aspiring presidents in 2020. He would have competition for the support of the Democratic establishment. And he would almost certainly face tough challenges from the left — the source of much of the party’s energy at the moment — possibly from liberal firebrands Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Biden would likely present himself as a more centrist Democrat with working-class appeal, bipartisan credentials and grounding in a more civil political culture that has faded in the Trump era, said Jim Margolis, a top adviser to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
He hit those themes gently at a memorial service for his late Senate colleague, Republican John McCain, last week.
“I always thought of John as a brother,” Biden said. “We had a hell of a lot of family fights.”
Since leaving the vice president’s office, he has emerged as among the party’s most popular national figures and one of its most willing Trump adversaries.
That leaves Biden for the next two months as one of his party’s most soughtafter 2018 campaign headliners. He plans to make multiple campaign stops a week this fall for Democratic candidates, according to people familiar with the plans.
“As the vice president has said many times himself, he is focused on electing as many Democrats as possible all across the country and on encouraging people to get out and vote this fall,” Biden adviser Kate Bedingfield said. “That’s the focus of his energy right now.”