NYT: Hillary Clinton Camp Is Making Moves to Check Joe Biden

[portlander23]

NYT: Hillary Clinton Camp Is Making Moves to Check Joe Biden

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign, increasingly worried about the threat of a challenge from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., is making a sudden and urgent effort to throw roadblocks into his path.

After months of voicing doubt about a challenge from the vice president, Clinton campaign operatives are viewing Mr. Biden’s entry into the contest as a serious possibility and are trying to rally the party’s apparatus and its donors to her side. They have flooded uncommitted Democrats with emails, phone calls and a plea for them to sign a letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. In the letter, Democrats are asked to “pledge to support Hillary Rodham Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Committee Convention with my unpledged delegate vote.”

Mr. Biden has kept even his loyal supporters guessing about whether he will become a candidate. But the Clinton campaign is not taking chances. A subtle critique is emerging from the campaign’s allies about the potential vulnerabilities Mr. Biden would bring to the race.

This week, David Brock, who created the Clinton group Correct the Record, which is coordinating with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, told Chicago Magazine his “gut” told him Mr. Biden would not run because “he’ll realize that at this point in his career, he can go out with everyone’s respect and esteem.”

On a recent stop at a diner in Laconia, N.H., Mrs. Clinton answered a voter’s question about why she had supported bankruptcy legislation that Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and other liberal activists opposed. Unprompted, she raised the vice president’s role in the bill.

“I said, ‘It’s really important to me that we don’t hurt women and children, so I will support it even though there are other things I don’t like in it,” Mrs. Clinton explained to the questioner, Jo Smith. Then, she added, “It was Vice President Biden who was the senator from Delaware and the Republican co-sponsor that I was talking with.”

But several Democrats who have been in close contact with the campaign say they see a new sense of seriousness among her advisers about the prospect of a Biden candidacy. Mrs. Clinton’s team has been adamant that they are not behind efforts to draw negative attention to Mr. Biden, or to do anything to pressure him.

“I think they’re trying to create the impression that it will be difficult for anybody to climb up and beat Hillary in the superdelegate count,” said Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania who is supporting Mrs. Clinton. But, he added, “I wouldn’t pressure people too hard if I were them.”

Much of the Clinton campaign’s focus has been on the so-called superdelegates, the elected officials and party elders who have significant influence in the nomination process, and whose endorsement carries weight with party insiders.

Related:

David Brock is not worried about Bernie Sanders

FiveThirtyEight: All This Biden Talk Is Exposing Soft Spots In Clinton’s Support

WaPo: Clinton defends bankruptcy vote from Senate career, saying Biden played a role

[Cali_Democrat]

1. NYT article just meant to stir shit on the Dem side and help GOPers

Joe will decide what he decides.

Simple as that.

[elleng]

3. Yes he will,

and there will be pressure from HRC, plain old fact.

[elleng]

2. “pledge to support Hillary Rodham Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Committee Convention

with my unpledged delegate vote.”

[MindfulOne]

17. crazy, right?

crazy times...

[elleng]

18. I wish only 'crazy,'

but rather threatening imo.
Definitely crazy TIMES.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

4. Define "Team."

Mrs. Clinton’s team has been adamant that they are not behind efforts to draw negative attention to Mr. Biden, or to do anything to pressure him.

[murielm99]

5. Who are you asking to define "team?"

The logical choice would be the author, not other DU members.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. It was rhetorical, dear.

[HERVEPA]

9. The "dear" stuff is disgusting, just so you know.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. Opinions vary.

[HERVEPA]

23. Not among non-sexist men.

You wouldn't catch Bernie doing that crap.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

24. Again, opinions vary, but you're welcome to yours.

Have a nice day.

[HERVEPA]

25. Nope. It's condescending.

As a Bernie supporter, unpleasant to see another Bernie supporter behave this way.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

26. You're entitled to your opinion.

But you should let it go.

[HERVEPA]

27. You should learn something. And you're welcome to let it go.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

28. I have learned long ago that people take things out

of context then make demands based solely on that.

[HERVEPA]

29. Unless you were responding to your wife or girlfriend, there was no out of context

This is not science fiction you are dealing with, it's actual people.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

30. Thanks for reinforcing what I had written above. I'm walking away from you now.

Have a nice day.

[840high]

13. Not much better than "sweetie".

[840high]

12. I should believe them?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

14. My 4 year old doesn't believe in Santa.

She's pretty sharp.

I don't usually believe somebody just because they say "trust me" since it is not under oath or legally binding.

[roguevalley]

7. Joe has his pitfalls too. Just read this on Huffpost

WASHINGTON -- As a freshman senator, Joe Biden gave an extended interview for a Washingtonian magazine profile in which he told writer Kitty Kelley that he was not entirely on board with Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that had legalized abortion nationwide the previous year.

"When it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I'm about as liberal as your grandmother. I don't like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don't think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body," Biden said in the June 1974 article.

Today, Biden is a staunch supporter of abortion rights. The Huffington Post reached out to the vice president's office to ask when he evolved on the issue and what made him change his mind. A spokeswoman said that there'd been no evolution and that Biden's comments were taken out of context.

snip

During that portion of the interview, the 31-year-old senator was talking broadly about how he does not hold doctrinaire positions, which might have angered the once-powerful liberal group Americans for Democratic Action.

"I don't care how that damn Americans for Democratic Action rates me," he said. "Those ADA ratings get us into so much trouble that a lot of us sit around thinking up ways to vote conservative just so we don't come out with a liberal rating. When it comes to civil rights and civil liberties, I'm a liberal but that's it. I'm really quite conservative on most other issues. My wife said I was the most socially conservative man she had ever known. I'm a screaming liberal when it comes to senior citizens because I really think they are getting screwed. I'm a liberal on health care because I believe it is a birth right of every human being -- not just some damn privilege to be meted out to a few people. But when it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I'm about as liberal as your grandmother. I don't like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don't think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body. I support a limited amnesty, and I don't think marijuana should be legalized. Now, if you still think I'm a liberal, let me tell you that I support the draft. I'm scared to death of a professional army. I vote my own way and it is not always with the Democrats. I did vote for George McGovern, of course, but I would have voted for Mickey Mouse against Richard Nixon. I despise that man."

snip

In the years after he spoke with Kitty Kelley, Biden became a champion of the Violence Against Women Act, burnishing his liberal credentials with that 1994 law. He lost points with progressives over his treatment of witness Anita Hill during the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

He also lived up to his promise to take not-so-liberal positions as a leader in ratcheting up the drug war, pushing mass incarceration with the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and seeking to deregulate Wall Street and boost credit card companies domiciled in his home state of Delaware.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joe-biden-abortion-1974_560c5ee3e4b076812700b4d6

Fuck good old Uncle Joe.

[BlueWaveDem]

8. After seeing the millions Dems are pulling in

Joe will probably not run, being as he would start with $0.

[askew]

11. No pledge is going to lock in Superdelegates.

They can change their votes right up to the convention. Hillary tried this nonsense last time.

And judging by her low fundraising #s, she should spend more time drumming up enthusiasm and money and less time with sneaky tricks and attacks on Biden.

[murielm99]

15. Her low fundraising #s?

Is that a new meme? Usually the bernistas are griping about how corporate she is, how much money she has from banksters, yada, yada, yada.

[oasis]

16. Joe checked himself by taking too much time to decide.

give it up Joe.

[PATRICK]

19. I know there is

ample reason to take one's ideological peer seriously on the planned game-board and by the numbers. Yet today is instinctively a different kind of problem where the viewpoint is strategically critical. Hillary and Sanders are like apples and oranges. The raw political issue was whether the Sanders challenge signaled weakness of Clinton. That was somewhat debatable and almost not relevant to the issues concerning Sanders' supporters.

No. It is allowing the story of a non-candidate(who lost a couple of primaries already) to show weakness on this "centrist" name recog territory to deflate numbers and strength. As an opportunity to distract from the actual challenger, deflecting troublesome revolt it is doubly dangerous to signal worry over a non-candidate. They should have spread the untrue(or as true as anything in the public opinion fudge of the moment) that Biden was a threat only to Sanders and other no-chance rivals, splitting a shrinking pie instead of the image of disheartened mobs fleeing the Clinton campaign. Somehow Clinton finds herself triangulated in a very frustrating way.

It is a time to dispel doubt and speak strong, positive power from the current heights. She may however be hamstrung by her own design and unfortunately, politically weak, a threat to the vote margin and downticket. There are greatly flawed villains who played the game victoriously. There are good, smart people who fumbled the ball. The people want to see serious leadership choices beyond what they usually have to pick from and a strength or perfection that maybe cannot be fully there.

[PATRICK]

20. In all this I missed

just exactly why Biden wants to deny Hillary the nomination in the first place. And weaken her without doing anything at all. Or does that even count in his choice? Maybe at this stage it is impolitic for him to ruminate negatively on this current non contest but someone should know something why a third Biden attempt is so important to make.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. Yah, that bankruptcy bill was a turd.

She seems to be acknowledging as much even while trying to lay primary responsibility for it with Biden.

One wonders why she couldn't just not vote for it, then.