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SAVE THE DATE
My next Zoom town hall is scheduled for Tuesday, December 1 at 8pm ET.
Stand by for more details about how to sign up.
Presented in conjunction with the Political Voices Network.
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I know Joe.
I don’t know him as well as other reporters do, to be sure.
But I’ve covered him for a long time, and as you can see from this November 2, 2007 clip, I’ve exhibited a greater sense of his political possibilities than some others have at times:
In the 2008 cycle, with the Big 3 of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, most journalists gravitated towards the doings of that trio.
I made it a point to follow the smaller crowds to numerous Biden events, from the Iowa State Fair, to a union hall, to casual living room gatherings.
From his chairing the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, to his time on the campaign trail, to his selection of and service in the vice presidential slot of Barack Obama, I have always been interested in the Great American Story of Joe Biden.
For those of you who plan to stick around (and those who feel like, with the election over, perhaps it is time to go back to Netflix and only Netflix), let me tell you just some of the things I know about Joe:
1. As much as any other living U.S. political figure, this man cares about clan loyalty. Every presidential candidate and president gathers a mix of old-time, long-time stalwarts and new blood. There will be new folks in a Biden administration, but make no mistake: the core members of Team Biden are always going to be the ones who were around in the ‘80s and ‘90s (or earlier). Which means, if you don’t know who the Donilons are, for instance, it is time to learn.
2. However influential you think Jill Biden is within and about Joe’s life, multiply that by 5.
3. However influential you think Valerie Biden Owens is within and about Joe’s life, multiply that by 7. Which is not to say that VBO is more influential than Jill….
4. The decades-long issue passions of Joe Biden’s career derive from and reflect his time as chair of Foreign Relations and Judiciary. Those are the topics on which he is most comfortable and most animated. Those are the areas in which his experience and relationships are world class (which is not to say he has gotten everything right on these subject matters…).
5. Economics is a much different story.
6. You can teach this old dog new tricks. For years in the Senate and then as vice president, Mr. Biden had a well-deserved reputation for talking far, far too long on most every occasion. I once was seated in a DC restaurant within easy sight of a table for two holding Biden and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The pair shared a very long meal. Literally every time I glanced over at them, Biden was talking and Wolfowitz was engaged in patently obligatory and labored listening. Cut to the 2020 cycle, during which Biden gave some of the shortest speeches and debate answers of any presidential nominee in modern history, often apologizing for going on too long with reporters when his replies were (ironically) nowhere near as lengthy as those of the version of Biden that for years vexed his staff, supporters, and Barack Obama to no end.
7. While Obama would look askance at times at his chatty buddy-buddy pal, Biden looked askance right back – over the president’s lack of the pol touch, his failure to gladhand not just members of Congress but governors and mayors too. During the Obama-Biden years, the VP would often have to smooth over White House relationships with those electeds who were as flabbergasted as Biden was at the president’s lack of effort in the most basic of basics.
8. Joe Biden still reads a room better than you realize he does and/but not as well as he thinks he does -- or as he used to.
9. Joe Biden thinks the traditional press fancies him as much as they did John McCain – when in fact their consensus view now places him somewhere between where John Kerry and Al Gore were in their affections. (There is no item on this list that will vex Biden more than this one…)
10. However much you think Joe Biden knows about how social media works, divide that by 17.
11. This is a man who regularly performs acts of kindness, from the small to the very large. To illustrate: If someone compliments something he has, like, say, cufflinks or a pen, or even the baseball cap on his head, he will give it to them and, when they protest, he will tell them, "My father taught me if someone admires something you have, you should give it to them."
We are all about to get to know Joe a whole lot better.
Except for the Donilons.
They already know it all.
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My reporting with readers and others suggests that many Democrats now simultaneously hold one deeply-held thought and one deeply-pained feeling in their personhoods:
1. The thought: The election is over and Joe Biden has obviously won.
2. The feeling: Donald Trump is somehow going to steal the election – or at least cause a full-blown constitutional crisis trying that will divide the nation irrevocably.
…as reflected in the top of the New York Times homepage, on which the word “Biden” is hard to find:
HALPERIN SAYS: As it has throughout the Era of Trump, the great American system is not breaking, is only bending in a few places, and will definitively hold before too long.
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If you’ve lost the New York Post’s pro-Trump and anti-anti-Trump columnist Michael Goodwin….:
[T]he overarching fact is that the Trump legal team hasn’t presented a provable claim that looks likely to overturn the results in a single state….
[T]iming is everything in politics as in gambling, and Kenny Rogers had it right when he sang, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away.”
And:
And:
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Inhale this essential reading Politico story about Joe Biden’s apparent posture towards a lame-duck pandemic relief measure.
HALPERIN SAYS: If this moment and important issue reflect how Team Biden plans to defer to Nancy Pelosi and finesse/confront Mitch McConnell, good luck to them in January.
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You have read it all before – the indecision, the 2024 musings, the post-presidency efforts to raise/make money, the vitriol directed at Fox News, the kingmaking aspirations, the indifference to Republican Party goals that don’t align fully with his own – but this Washington Post story is the best to date on what Sources Familiar With What the President Angrily Muses About at Any Given Moment say about what the president angrily muses about at any given moment about his future.
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Another essential read from Paul Kane -- on why Chester County, PA is the cat’s jammies, the bees’ knees, the center of the political universe, and the topic of deep interest of Keystone State and national pols.
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HALPERIN SAYS AGAIN: Let’s all stop focusing only on getting people to stay home for Thanksgiving – and let’s devote as much or more attention to helping those who are traveling to minimize the spread of the virus.
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