"Moveon who?" The left moves to the middle.
'Uniter' Biden says he can win in the red states
"The Hill" - By Alexander Bolton
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who is rarely thought of as a centrist, plans to take his presidential campaign to red states and rural voters in a bid to show that he has the quality that many party strategists say is key to winning the 2008 presidential primary: electability.
Biden yesterday announced the formation of a leadership political action committee, Unite Our States, with the purpose of electing a candidate "committed to addressing the challenges facing our country by beginning to unite 'red' and 'blue' states, big cities and small towns, and Americans of all walks of life."
By stressing the importance of unifying Americans, Biden is marching on to territory already being surveyed by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who is also laying the groundwork for a 2008 presidential run.
Democratic strategists' conventional wisdom says the 2008 primary will boil down to a contest between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner, and a "not Hillary" candidate. A strategy emerging among those vying to be the alternative to Clinton, particularly Biden and Bayh, is to emphasize their ability to unite Americans. The implication is that Clinton is a divider.
Biden's aides said in a statement: "Unite Our States works to diminish the partisan and divisive dialogue dominating American politics today."
Mark Gitenstein, a Chicago-based lawyer who formerly served as Biden's chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee and now helps Biden craft his speeches and message, said, "The Republican message is by its nature a very divisive message, and ours is intended to be a unifying message.
"The types of issues we face - retirement security and healthcare - despite the miracle of the free market are government problems. Solving those problems requires you to unite rather than divide. He has always been able to build big bipartisan coalitions."
Biden's allies stress his work drafting comprehensive crime bills in the 1980s with conservatives such as Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). They note that Biden delivered a eulogy for Thurmond in 2003, even though it was civil rights that drove Biden to run for the Senate, whereas Thurmond set the record for the longest filibuster while opposing the 1957 civil-rights bill.
Biden's handling of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork while chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the late '80s is also cited. Biden assembled a bipartisan coalition to reject Bork's nomination by a vote of 58-42.
Biden has embraced Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's strategy of targeting rural voters and challenging the GOP in all 50 states instead of confining combat to some 14 battleground states.
Biden raised eyebrows this month by announcing on CBS's "Face the Nation" that "if, in fact, I think that I have a clear shot at winning the nomination by this November or December, then I'm going to seek the nomination" and that he planned to travel around the country to test the resonance of his message. He is the only prominent Democrat to announce his intention to run.
The revelation was unexpected only in being made early, with few of the normal preparatory steps of a presidential campaign. For example, Biden has not yet traveled to Iowa or New Hampshire this year. Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), probable candidates both, have made such trips but steadfastly maintain that they have made no decision.
Biden's aides say his announcement fits; he is a straight-talking politician from the middle class. "What he said on CBS was some pretty common Senator Biden candor," said his Senate chief of staff, Danny O'Brien.
The aides have, though, also tried to temper Biden's outspokenness by noting that their man was responding to questions, was not making a formal announcement and hasn't made a final decision.
Biden's aides and allies say his penchant for straight talking, like Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.), and his middle-class background will help him connect with rural voters, especially white men whose disenchantment with the Democrats has put Southern states carried by Bill Clinton 1992 - Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Kentucky - seemingly out of the party's reach.
To bolster the argument for his electability, Biden has scheduled his message tour through several solidly red states. He gave a speech in Kentucky earlier this week and may return to the state, which Bush carried with 60 percent of the vote, in the fall.
Biden also plans to travel to Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee. He also spoke recently at a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in South Carolina.
"He wants to feel that what he's talking about is connecting with the voters we think Democrats need to connect with to put together a winning strategy for 2008," O'Brien said.
But Biden will not take the Democratic base for granted, O'Brien said, and plans "more traditional" political events, such as state party fundraisers, in California, New York and New Jersey. That Biden has, however, been less political than other Democratic White House hopefuls is suggested by the surprising fact that he did not have a leadership PAC until this week.
Biden supporters trumpet his personal qualities: a knack for empathizing with middle-class voters that he shares with Bill Clinton but that the Democrats' 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), lacked, according to many.
Biden's greatest strength, his supporters say, is his foreign-policy expertise. He is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has served as its chairman.
"We're probably one terrorist act away from the Democrats' really focusing on a candidate who has unquestioned credentials on national security and terrorism," said David Wilhelm, who served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 1994 election cycle and is an informal adviser to Biden. "Senator Biden brings that to the table. He is the go-to person in the Democratic Party on those issues."
Ted Kaufman, Biden's former chief of staff and one of his closest confidants, said, "He's somebody who could be president, [who has] operated on the world stage.
"He understands foreign policy as well [as] if not better than anyone in the country because he's done it for 30 years."
Few others can make that argument because few have spent as long in the upper echelons of government. Biden upset the Republican incumbent to win his Senate seat at the age of 29, an achievement that is a prominent part of his personal story.
Just more than a month after that surprise victory, Biden suffered tragedy when his wife and daughter died in a car accident. The reversal of fortune gives him a compelling story for the campaign trail, which his allies cite when talking about his strength of character and his capacity for empathy.
"So many people come to him and speak to him - not on how he's going to vote on a Senate bill; they speak to him about their own personal tragedies - and he's spent so much time comforting and giving strength," said Valerie Biden Owens, his younger sister, who has run his past Senate campaigns and is considered one of his closest political advisers. "He has tremendous personal courage."
The biggest obstacle to Biden is fundraising. He comes from a small state. One ally noted that Biden's past campaigns have been on the scale of House races since Delaware has the population of a congressional district. That means he will have to raise most of his war chest out of state, forcing him to compete with Kerry, Clinton and Edwards in Democratic fundraising hubs such as New York, California and Massachusetts. Kerry, Clinton and to a lesser extent Edwards have established national fundraising networks. Biden does not.
Supporter Joe Cari, who served as national finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2000, said that putting together a national fundraising base is "one of the challenges." But the importance of fundraising may be overstated in a crowded Democratic field, he said, adding, "Remember, Kerry had no money until he won somewhere. Money will follow the message."
Cari, who lives in Chicago, said Biden would do a "significant" fundraising event in that city in the fall and is "going to be on the road a great deal in the summer testing his message, meeting with donors and doing fundraisers."
His advisers note that when Biden ran for president in 1988 he at one point led the Democratic field in money raised, although they acknowledge that the price of running has since soared. |
