A handful of high-wattage surrogates are being dispatched as part of the anti-Trump effort.
The vice president’s presence on the trail is the one that’s most telling to Democrats close to the Clinton campaign, who have been waiting for months for the triumvirate of Obama, Biden, and Warren to take to the battleground states and amplify the former secretary of state’s anti-Trump barrage. To them, it signals the arrival of a new phase of the campaign in which the highest-profile Democrats imaginable, likely including former President Bill Clinton and possibly Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders, join Hillary Clinton in making the case against the presumptive GOP nominee — and for her.
.. “The Republicans also have a lot of talent, but they don’t want to be associated with Donald Trump.”
.. Sending him into Scranton, his hometown (and the city where Clinton’s father grew up), gives Biden the chance to help defend Pennsylvania for Democrats after Trump has promised to put it into play with his appeal to blue collar and middle-class white men whose industries have been hit hard by multinational trade deals.
.. Painting Trump as a threat to laborers’ way of life, the materials directly echo the message that party officials expect to hear from Biden.
“That’s what he did in ’08 and ’12. He’s reprising that role,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. and Democratic National Committee Chairman Ed Rendell. “Where surrogates have an effect is not necessarily in persuasion. It’s about turnout. Joe can remind the blue collar, white working class guys of all the things that the Republican Party has done to deny them help.”
If Clinton Implodes, Democrats May Turn to Biden and Warren
One reason may be that the last thing Hillary Clinton really wants to talk about is how the office of the inspector general functioned during her four-year tenure at State. Astonishingly, the department had no permanent inspector general during that period, the office being filled by an acting inspector, Harold Geisel. He had been an ambassador appointed by President Bill Clinton and also had close ties to the State Department’s leadership. Those ties would have barred him from seeking the job of permanent inspector general. “It’s a convenient way to prevent oversight,” says Michael Harris, a University of Maryland professor who is an expert on the role of inspectors general in government. Acting inspectors general are “in a position where they could be removed at any moment.”
.. That’s where Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren would come in. Biden would be sold as a steady hand who would energize President Obama’s supporters, and Warren would be pitched to delegates as someone who could keep Sanders progressives on board. “The implication would be that, at age 74, Biden might serve only one term and Warren would be a natural successor,’ a former Democratic congressman told me.
The Task Facing Joe Biden
.. he will have made things even more difficult for himself by not declaring his candidacy prior to last week’s Democratic debate, in Las Vegas. In almost any other country, it would be crazy to suggest that a candidate announcing his candidacy more than a year before Election Day had missed his or her chance. The United States is different, however.
.. The Clinton campaign and groups associated with it have already raised more than a hundred million dollars. Bernie Sanders, who relies largely on small donations, has raised more than forty million dollars. Ultimately, much of this money will go to media companies, in the form of paid advertising. At this stage, however, the main outlays are for building campaign organizations.