Joe Biden is apparently planning to run for president in 2020. He has already hired some Obama advisers, which indicates that he plans on running on the Obama record. That would be an odd decision.
CNBC reports:
Biden hires over a dozen senior advisors from Obama administration for 2020 campaign: Sources
Many of these people didn’t work within Biden’s office throughout Obama’s tenure as president, but they have extensive campaign experience ranging from political consulting to communications, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Since their time in the Obama White House, some of these aides have gone on to work on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and later helped Democrats retake the U.S. House of Representatives during the 2018 congressional midterm elections, these people said.
Numerous former Obama White House advisors who have been brought on to work with Biden’s team, have yet to hear where the campaign will be headquartered. But they expect it will be either in Delaware or Pennsylvania. Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and as a Senator, represented the First State for over three decades.
This raises an obvious question. What if Obama wants to support another candidate in 2020? That could get a little awkward.
Here’s another tough question. What if the Obama voter coalition doesn’t want to vote for Biden?
The Associated Press reports:
Biden’s strategy will test whether anyone other than Obama can recreate the coalition that delivered him to the White House twice, but was something Hillary Clinton was unable to do in 2016. And it will thrust the 44th president’s legacy into the center of the 2020 campaign.
Though Obama remains overwhelmingly popular among Democrats, an undercurrent of the party’s primary contest is the push from some liberal Democrats to go far further than his administration in upending the federal health care system or addressing income inequality. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have led the charge, calling for more sweeping, systemic change, though neither has explicitly criticized Obama by name.
“The party has changed somewhat,” said Paul Harstad, a longtime Obama pollster. “I think the party is looking for someone more aggressive than Obama in tactics and approach.”
Biden probably thinks this is going to be easy for him.
If he does, he is in for a rude awakening.
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