2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBiden insiders Feel Clinton STALKING
Joe Biden isn’t running for president yet, but Hillary Clinton’s already running against him. Clinton and her aides have their line—the vice president deserves the time and space to decide, they repeat over and over and over—and so far they’ve held off the heavy artillery. Instead, they’re firing warning shots. Tightly targeted warning shots. The hints from the campaign come in heavy: Biden would be to Clinton’s right if he ran, more out of touch with the party’s progressive base. Surrogates have sounded off, questioning his chances and his political abilities, wondering if he’d be up to the job. Clinton even leapt in herself, bringing him up out of nowhere as she spoke to a woman in a diner last week in New Hampshire to knock him for how disappointing he’d been when they were working on the bankruptcy bill in the Senate. That was followed by her campaign chair John Podesta, sprinkling a little of his own shade in front of the pro-Clinton Priorities super PAC in New York—it’s already too late for Biden to mount a real challenge, and he’s not going to decide for a few more weeks on top of that.They’ve stepped up the roll-out of their endorsements and organization. Their operation is just so massive and well put together, they want Biden and anyone considering supporting him to think, there’s just no space left for him. So sure, take your time, is the message people in and around the campaign seem to be sending—but if you end up at yes, you’re going to get hurt. Saint on the sidelines is far different from actual candidate, they want him to realize, when they and everyone else unleash on him, raking through every gaffe and every vote in 36 years in the Senate, digging through his personal life. In the campaign headquarters and in Clinton's wider orbit, they take care to say how much they like him, how much they respect him, don't want to say a bad word about him. But “Should a man like Joe Biden run?” is going to be a very different question for them than “Should a man like Joe Biden be president?”
They haven’t engaged as much as some around the campaign expected, or as much as some Biden allies (the ones who feel affection for him and feel like he’s being goaded into a run) were hoping, so that he’d be scared off.
Inside the Brooklyn headquarters, this has become a sensitive topic. “Because of the personal tragedy and because he is beloved by the president and because he is beloved by so many staffers on both sides, they are super sensitive to doing anything that even whiffs of attacking him,” said a source close to the Clinton campaign. To Biden and the people he’s talking to most about running, this is proof, they think, of just how much of a scare they’ve put into Clinton. On top of what’s public, they say they think the spate of stories a few weeks ago digging into his record on bankruptcy and the Crime Bill came, if not straight from the headquarters in Brooklyn, from people just far enough removed to give them plausible deniability. “This is not a surprise,” said one person familiar with Biden’s thinking. “I think it’s pretty clear that they’re concerned about it.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/joe-biden-hillary-clinton-2016-213911
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delrem
(9,688 posts)to the level of Hillary, say on the scale of trustworthiness.
That's an important scale and on it Hillary Clinton falls out as a flawed candidate.
If Biden entered the race Hillary would be wiped out, as debate would now be about issues and would be between Biden, O'Malley, Sanders. Hillary might find herself wondering what she can do with all that money, all that "free speech" citizens united unleashed, when nobody is listening anymore.
in_cog_ni_to
(41,600 posts)Most, if not all, Bernie supporters will NOT be jumping on the Anyone But Bernie Biden bandwagon. There's no way in hell Millennials jump ship to Biden. I'm not seeing how Hillary survives Biden.
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)We're not going to say
"Oh look - Joe's running. Let's go over there!"
or
"Oh look - HC's got yet another policy change. Let's go over there!"
leftofcool
(19,460 posts)Either Joe gets in or he doesn't. So, stop whining about Hillary's massive ground game and endorsements and do something, like get in the race.
Laser102
(816 posts)If she didn't have this organization I would be wondering how ready she is.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Who knew? 
delrem
(9,688 posts)So in your face.
How can people even discuss this, civilly? I mean actually discuss what Hillary Clinton means as she prays to her God, on stage there. With not a H-arrow for Women sign, but a Women for H-arrow sign adorning the podium.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)DENIAL Denial is the first of the five stages of grief. It helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.
ANGER Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where is God in this? Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure – – your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.
BARGAINING Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. “Please God, ” you bargain, “I will never be angry at my wife again if you’ll just let her live.” After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?” We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening…if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.
DEPRESSION After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you’re in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.
ACCEPTANCE Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.
I figure the Biden fake is the Party Honchos Bargaining with the Electorate...okay, you don't like Hillary, how about good ole Joe?
We've already seen plenty of the Denial and Anger here on DU. No outright depression yet, though, that will be after South Carolina.
And as for Acceptance, perhaps in Bernie's second term....
Response to Segami (Original post)
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Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)lobodons
(1,290 posts)Just will be nice when the primaries are over and Hillary can take it to which ever clown escapes the GOP clown car in General!!
MineralMan
(146,336 posts)Joe Biden might become one. Why is anyone surprised that she might mention him? In reality, he would be a bigger threat to her campaign than Bernie Sanders is.
One thing that is certain is that Joe Biden will be no better received than Clinton by Sanders supporters. He and Clinton attract the same group of Democratic voters, a group that Bernie Sanders needs to have on his side to win the nomination. Without a sizable percentage of votes in the primaries from that group, he has no chance of becoming the nominee next year.
Anyone who thinks that statement is incorrect need only add the polling results for Clinton and Biden together and compare them to Bernie's poll results.
So, you can expect Hillary Clinton to actively pursue voters who are now polling for Biden. She's not "stalking" him. She's campaigning for the primary elections. There is a difference.
Response to MineralMan (Reply #11)
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MineralMan
(146,336 posts)This is not my first election.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)The nominee will either be Clinton or Biden. There have been polls that show Biden ahead of Sanders and Biden isn't even running. Sanders will hopefully spur a grassroots political movement so that one day a genuine progressive can become POTUS and actually govern as a progressive, as opposed to someone constrained by the present system. But Sanders himself is never going to become POTUS.
ColesCountyDem
(6,943 posts)MineralMan
(146,336 posts)Many things can change the momentum. Many things, indeed.
ColesCountyDem
(6,943 posts)artislife
(9,497 posts)All those posts about how much better Warren would be in the senate and we needed her to stay there?
Yup. Who knows if that was successful in converting Warren's mind or if Warren never wanted to run in the first place. This chatter is happening/has been happening in the words of "his grief" "needs to take time" "understandable if he doesn't run"...interesting.
Bounzer
(41 posts)Sad but true. Welcome to the new media.
Metric System
(6,048 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)I think there's probably a whole vast purple space of DC insiders where the chatter is generated, and this politico piece is the kind of speculative fiction it indulges in. The author, Edward-Isaac Dovere is a senior White House reporter. At politico.
That kind of article doesn't influence me.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)and the Clinton campaign knows it.
If Biden gets in he should beat Hillary pretty easily.
We will need to see if Bernie can hang in against him, but the VP is the natural successor and it is reasonable to assume that is how things will play out.
delrem
(9,688 posts)Sorry, but zzzzzzztt!
Joe Biden is being promoted because Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate.
She's flawed on the issue of trustworthiness, where she comes up very short. Too short for the oddsmakers, though that book hasn't been finalized yet.
Joe Biden is Plan B.
It has nothing to do with Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley.
