If Obama Endorses Biden…

by Dick Morris | August 27, 2015 12:04 am

If Joe Biden runs and President Obama endorses him — and both now appear likely — then all bets are off. Hillary Clinton will soon be dethroned as the frontrunner.

While Clinton holds a comfortable lead over Biden and Sanders in most current national polls (although Sanders leads in New Hampshire), once the vice president is officially in the race and once Obama joins as his corner man, he will surge in the polls.

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African-Americans will start to leave Clinton in a rush with Latinos following. With white radicals and labor types already largely backing Sanders. Clinton’s base will dwindle.

President Obama’s Press Secretary Josh Earnest strongly hinted that the president might endorse Joe Biden if he ran.

While taking care not to take sides in the looming Clinton/Biden/Sanders primary, he said that he “wouldn’t rule out the possibility of an endorsement in the Democratic primary.”

He then went on to shower praise on Biden, while offering only the most boilerplate and perfunctory words about Clinton.

He said of Biden:

–That Obama has said that naming him as VP was “the smartest decision he’d ever made in politics.”

–That “you could probably make the case that there is no one in American politics today who has a better understanding of exactly what is required to mount a successful national presidential campaign.”

Of Clinton, Earnest only noted Obama’s “appreciation, respect and admiration for the job” Clinton did as secretary of state.

Faint praise indeed.

Earnest’s statement is a clear and public hint from Obama to Biden that says: Get in the race, build up your standing, and then I will back you.

Obama cannot simply endorse Biden. He has to point out how his VP would be better than his former secretary of state. He will have to note her greater fidelity to his programs and policies and warn of her tendency to follow the polls to the center as her husband did in the ’90s. Or he will have to call attention to her electability problems in the wake of her email scandal.

Either approach would be deadly for Clinton. While a recent Suffolk University poll, taken on Aug. 20-24, shows Clinton with a commanding 54 percent vote share in Iowa, with Sanders and Biden following at 20 percent and 11 percent respectively, the internals show how damaging the email scandal will be among Democrats to Clinton.

Asked if they personally were “bothered” by the scandal, potential Democratic caucus-goers said no by 70-26. But asked if the scandal would hurt Clinton’s chances of winning, they said yes by 52-36. If Obama and Biden underscore this concern, it will take away the victory from Clinton.

Also see,

Fox News Seeks to Satisfy Mainstream Media, Not Its Viewers

Endnotes:
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