Column: As senior Dems publicly rally around Biden's reelection, privately they’re quite worried about an 82-year-old nominee, writes jmart. But they fear the potential alternative: the nomination of Kamala Harris and election of Donald Trump.
There’s something more cynical at work with the public show support of Joe Biden, however. It’s an exercise in escape-hatch politics. | Alex Brandon/AP PhotoJonathan Martin is POLITICO’s politics bureau chief and senior political columnist. His reported column chronicles the inside conversation and big-picture trends shaping politics.
He has only praise for Biden, and not just of the Minnesota Nice sort. “He’s a president of great competence and success, I admire the heck out of President Biden,” Phillips said. “And if he were 15-20 years younger it would be a no-brainer to nominate him, but considering his age it’s absurd we’re not promoting competition but trying to extinguish it.
My conversations with a variety of Democratic lawmakers and a number of the party’s governors, who were in Washington last week for National Governor’s Association’s winter meeting, bear out Phillips’s case that he has ample company in his view of Biden — but that they are as muted about it as he is loud.
My favorite, though, was the Democratic lawmaker who recalled speaking to Jill Biden and, hoping to plant a seed about a one-term declaration of victory, told her how her husband should be celebrated for saving democracy. When I asked if I could use any of that on the record, the lawmaker shot back: “absolutely not.”
Another reminder of why Biden enjoys goodwill from Democratic leaders came more recently, when the president did telephone Craig — after she was assaulted in an elevator. Biden called the congresswoman soon after, checking in on her and wishing her a happy birthday. As Craig put it to me before the attack took place: “Joe Biden is a really good man.
Saluting his candidacy is publicly framed as simply backing an incumbent president, dog bites man, nothing to see here.
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