Vice President Joe Biden became the only prospective or current Democratic presidential candidate supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Wednesday as Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her opposition.
Advertisement
Biden’s son Beau, the former attorney general of Delaware, died in May after a battle with brain cancer.
But the Draft Biden group’s inaugural ad further weds the vice-president’s potential White House bid with his history of personal tragedy.
One longtime friend said the long windup – and the fact that no staff has been hired – tells its own story. However, Biden’s office denied these claims.
“I think it plays to his strengths already, in that he is a fairly empathetic figure and he seems very likeable”. ‘It’s a “you know it when you see it” type thing. A source close to the vice president said there will be a “family conversation” this weekend to discuss his candidacy.
Joe Biden running for President?
All that’s missing is the candidate. In public comments since his son’s death, Biden has emphasized that his losses are no worse than those experienced by many Americans, and that he deserves no special sympathy.
The ad concludes: “Joe, run”. If it’s purely created to convince Mr Biden to run as part of his personal “redemption”, Politico’s Roger Simon recently offered a few words of warning: “Campaigns are meat grinders”.
BIDEN: My dad’s definition of success is when you look at your son and daughter and realize they turned out better than you, and they did.
The PAC has committed to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to run the ad on US cable networks. It all comes as Biden’s aides are blasting as “offensive” and “categorically false” a report accusing him of being politically “calculating” while mourning his son’s passing. “People who said they are right behind you are suddenly a good distance back”.
ALEXANDER: The 42nd president also weighed in on the Republican front-runner. Like it or not, the perception of Clinton (and the Clintons more broadly) is that they are always pushing the limits and forever calculating what position to take through the lens of politics.
Last month in battleground state Florida, a somber Biden said his family s “emotional energy” in the aftermath of Beau s death was the primary factor, not whether he could raise funds or put together a campaign team.
COLBERT: No? Because that would be pretty smart, man.
While Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said, “I love the vice president” and that his entry wouldn’t be “catastrophic” to Clinton, he added: “My hope is that he doesn’t get in”. “But by focusing on my sons I found my redemption”.
Advertisement
“When I heard that speech and heard how he talked about it, and it was really the only time I had heard him talk about it”, Putnam said, “it was just immediately captivating to me, and I thought well if it is captivating to me then, then it will probably be captivating to others”.
