From June 9-12, Fox News commissioned pollsters Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company (R) to survey 1,001 representative Americans; the poll concluded that if the election were called today, Sanders would beat Trump by 9 points, 49%-40%, as would Biden; Warren would beat him 43%-41%; Harris would beat him 42%-41%; and Buttigieg would beat him 41%-40% -- Sanders has acknowledged that "polls go up and polls go down." (via Naked Capitalism)
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For years it was one of the most lighty-amusing running jokes in memedom: The Onion's ongoing series of stories about then-VP Joe Biden, portraying him as Diamond Joe, everyone's favorite lewd but obviously harmless shirtless uncle. The editor behind the series regrets it and feels responsible for helping one of the most conspicuously moronic Democrat candidates seem electable despite repeated runs at high office that ended in disgrace and failure.
The handsome guy who’s got it good but doesn’t take himself too seriously is a profoundly American aesthetic, and Biden seemed to embody it. The Onion even produced a Biden book, The President of Vice, in 2013. He may not have been in on the joke, but he certainly knew about it and embraced it, calling it “hilarious” in a 2011 interview and jumping in to a Reddit AMA with the faux Biden to express his preference for Corvettes.
I can’t speak for my colleagues, but at the time, I didn’t take him seriously enough to think we were doing anything wrong. I thought of him as little more than a political necessity: the older, more conservative white guy who softened Barack Obama’s image in regions where the prospect of a black president was too radical. A deeper dive on Biden never felt necessary.
He's likely to be the candidate, unfortunately, guiding just less than half the electorate toward an inexorable sinking feeling as November 2020 approaches. The Onion's book about fake Joe, President of Vice, is now free of charge on Kindle. Read the rest
Hillary Clinton's campaign team "scrambled" after coming to believe Joe Biden would oppose her for the Democratic presidential nomination, reports Fox News. Some delicious, if insidery machinations turned up in campaign chief Joe Podesta's hacked email, as published by Wikileaks:
just three days later, the Biden threat appeared vanquished. Ron Klain, a former Biden chief of staff who is now an operative for the Clinton campaign, emailed Podesta with a cryptic note of thanks.
“It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise – and I am definitely dead to them -- but I’m glad to be on Team HRC, and glad that she had a great debate last night,” Klain wrote.
Six days later, on Oct. 21, Biden, with Obama by his side, gave a news conference from the White House declaring he wouldn’t run.
Biden would have sailed away from Trump much earlier and faster than Hillary Clinton did. But beyond the easy victory she's likely to win anyway all told, he doesn't have much to recommend him over her, and lacks many of her — yes, I know! — her scruples. Read the rest
