USA TODAY International Edition
Biden may be field’s top target
Rivals could exploit vulnerabilities to chop away front-runner’s lead
Joe Biden, a two-term vice president with 36 years in the Senate and two previous unsuccessful runs for president, has spent plenty of time debating.
As the front-runner for the Democratic nomination prepares to take the debate stage in Miami on Thursday, he may find himself a marked man.
While Biden holds a double-digit lead in national polls, and more than half of the field registers in the low-single digits or worse, it could be tempting for rivals to focus on the former vice president as the pack tries to persuade voters to look beyond the most well-known Democrat running.
Candidates may go after Biden for:
Ties with credit card, banking industry
Soon after Biden entered the race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts noted that during his time in the Senate, he voted for the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, legislation that tightened rules on who could qualify for bankruptcy protection and benefited credit card companies.
“At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hardworking families who were in bankruptcy because of medical problems, job losses, divorce or death in the family, there was nobody standing up for them,” Warren said. “I got in that fight because they just didn’t have anyone. And Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”
Biden’s son Hunter worked as a consultant for the Delaware-based MBNA, a financial services company bought by Bank of America in 2006. Biden campaigns raised more than $200,000 in contributions from MBNA executives and employees from 1998 to 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Biden’s aides have noted that MBNA was a big employer in his home state of Delaware.
In 2008, after he was tapped by presidential candidate Barack Oba
ma to serve as his running mate, the Obama campaign said the senator pushed for the bankruptcy bill to include protections to ensure that people in bankruptcy continue to pay child support and alimony. He called for provisions to help veterans, activeduty service members and debtors with serious medical problems.
Changing views on abortion
Until this month, the former vice president supported the Hyde Amendment, a law that prohibits the use of federal money for abortions. Biden switched his position days after his campaign affirmed that he still backed the amendment.
“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent” on others trying to limit abortion access in some states, Biden said.
As Democrats fight to protect abortion rights, Biden’s efforts to stake out a middle ground on the issue could leave him open to criticism.
Comments on segregationists
Biden recalled his ability to work with segregationists James Eastland and Herman Talmadge at the start of his Senate career.
Biden said he was trying to make a point about the lack of civility in Washington, but he was criticized for the anecdote he shared that Eastland always called him “son” and never “boy.” He grew testy after New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker called for him to apologize for his comments.
Biden, who has played up his friendship with Obama, has done well with African American voters in early polls. In South Carolina, he has the support of 52% of black Democrats, beating the closest candidate, Warren, by 38 percentage points, according to the Post and Courier-Change Research Poll of likely voters.
Foreign policy record
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served under Obama and President George W. Bush, assessed that Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Critics of Biden’s foreign policy record pointed out that as a senator, he voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991 that pushed Iraqi forces from Kuwait and in favor of the Iraq invasion in 2003 that led to an expensive decadelong slog in which 4,400 U.S. troops were killed.
Biden advised Obama against dispatching Navy SEALs on a dangerous mission in 2011 to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to accounts from Obama and White House officials.
Biden said he advised Obama “to go but to follow his own instinct.”
Or they may do nothing
At this point in the race, candidates might conclude it’s not worth spending precious speaking time going after Biden or any other candidate.
Only 35% of registered Democrats say they’re paying close attention to the campaign, and nearly two-thirds say they pay some or no attention, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll published this week.
“Do the math, and it comes out to somewhere between 7 and 11 minutes of total speaking time for each candidate,” Booker campaign manager Addisu Demissie wrote in a memo before the New Jersey senator’s appearance Wednesday, the first night of the debates. “So our aim on a crowded stage is straightforward: Cory will look to introduce himself to the voters just tuning in to the race.”