Throwing his hat in the 2020 ring April 25, 76-year-old Vice President Joe Biden leaped over some 22 other lesser-known rivals, taking a commanding lead in opinion polls showing that roughly 30% of Democrat voters support him. Closest to Biden is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) whose competitive run in 2016 against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made him a favorite in 2020. Sanders seems stuck at about 16%, not enough to remain competitive as the race heats up, especially with the upcoming 2019 debate schedule. Known as gaffe-prone, Binden should fair well this time around, considering the opposition from many quarters to President Donald Trump’s presidency. Unlike 2016, where Democrats had a flawed candidate in Hillary, Biden seems to fill the bill this time around. Biden has what other candidates don’t have: The look of someone capable of beating Trump.
Whatever one says about Trump, there’s been too much negative publicity in the mainstream press to overcome historically low approval ratings. While anything’s possible between now and Election Day, Biden looks like he has to show up without too much controversy and take the nomination. Democrat candidates like Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) or Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.), don’t carry enough name-recognition or gravitas to pull off the nomination. Kamala expressed outrage that Biden would suggest she consider joining the 2020 Democrat ticket as his running mate, premature by anyone’s standards but clearly looking ahead. Biden meant no offense, despite Kamala’s reaction 16 months before the election. “The rest of the race revolves around Joe Biden,” said Joe Trippi, journeyman Democrat strategist. Trippi believes the Democratic primary race is Joes to lose.
What puts Biden into a superior position is the vast range of inexperience of other Democrat candidates. Serving 40 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as former President Barack Obama’s Vice President, Biden comes with age but oodles of experience. While some think Biden’s too moderate for today’s liberal Democrat Party, he’s liberal enough, considering he was Obama’s VP. Talking about Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez’s “Green New Deal” or today’s Gay Rights legislation called the “Equality Act” sponsored by Rep. David Ciciline (D-R.I.), Biden won’t have problems agreeing with progressives in his Party. Biden enjoys the full support of 79-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who’s shown she’s got the progressive wing under control to beat Trump in 2020. Only three weeks into his campaign, Biden’s already leaped over his rivals in the 2020 race.
Voters in 2020 have one mission in mind: Keeping Trump from a second term. Biden’s biggest selling point to voters is that he’ll have the best chance in 2020 of beating Trump. However the Mueller Report shakes out, it’s not going to be enough to salvage Trump’s approval ratings across a wide swath of the political spectrum, including within the GOP. There’s no comparison to past presidential races like in 2012 when former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney ran against Obama. Obama, while unpopular with Republicans, commanded appeal with independent voters, making up about 60% of the electorate. Biden has all the right stuff, gaffes and all, to beat Trump in 2020, giving voters equilibrium, back to politics-as-usual in the age of Trump. Most voters want old school stability, not the upheaval going on in China Trade Wars or high turnover in Trump’s Cabinet over the first three years.
Hillary was deeply flawed because of her email scandal, not to mention questions about how she ran a pay-to-play scheme while running the State Department. Trump was able to sell disenfranchised Democrat and Republican voters on the idea that Washington needed to be blown up, ending the status quo. Trump certainly ended the status quo but he also created so much anxiety in voters they’re looking for stability anyway they can get it. .”I’ve told every single one of them that Joe Biden is going to be more formidable that they thought, and it was going to be tough for anyone to emerge from this field,” said Trippi, referring to the 23-member Democrat field, whose lack of name recognition and media exposure puts them at a real disadvantage. Biden doesn’t have to do anything special to beat all the Democrat field on the way to the nomination, other than appearing more mature and presidential.
Biden waited as long as possible to jump into the 2020 race, largely because he knew polls showed him as the Democrat front-runner. “This is a dynamic process,” said 2004 Democrat nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) strategist Robert Shrum. Shrum sees Biden’s age as a potential pitfall, though he’s not that much older than Trump. Whatever happens in the debates, Biden’s got enough media poise to look more presidential on stage, compared with his youthful Democrat rivals. “When we get to that whites-of-their-eyes stage of the campaign and candidate realize the only way to to improve their market share is to take Biden head-on, that’s when the rival test begins,” said GOP strategist Kevin Madden, who advised Romney in 2012. Biden’s real weakness is whether or not he can keep pace with Trump, whose campaign schedule often goes at breakneck speed
