Lewandowski: Why Joe Biden won’t make it to the White House — again
Joe Biden’s first attempt at a run for president ended with him getting caught plagiarizing a speech by former British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.
The Washington Examiner reported that, at the Iowa State Fair in August 1987, Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, said: “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?”
In a prior speech, Kinnock had asked: “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys” — his wife — “the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?”
That plagiarism incident ended Biden’s presidential run that year in humiliation.
{mosads}Twenty years later, in 2008, Biden took another run for the highest office in the land. He ran against a fellow senator, Barack Obama (D-Ill.), and lost badly in Iowa. As Politico noted recently, “Biden ended up capturing less than one percent of state delegate equivalents — 0.9 percent, precisely. He dropped out of the race later that evening.” Still, Obama put Biden on the ticket as his running mate that fall.
Today, the former vice president’s premature coronation as the 2020 Democratic nominee for president — Politico says he’s gone from “flop to frontrunner” in Iowa — reminds me, in many ways, of another Democratic icon: Hillary Clinton. Both have conducted two train-wreck campaigns, and both seem to have lived a politically cursed public life. Yet, many Democrats seem not to be worried about entrusting him to avoid a third mortifying defeat.
When it comes to foreign policy, Biden’s record is loaded with disqualifying judgments and bad decisions that should bar him from high office, simply in order to protect the American people. His poor judgment might be a bigger threat to America than Russia, Iran and China combined.
Biden opposed the signature accomplishment of President Obama — the capturing and killing of Osama Bin Laden. The New York Times reported in 2012 that Vice President Biden advised “don’t go” forward with the raid that killed the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States. The one time President Obama made a good on-the-spot decision, Biden was the skunk in the White House Situation Room, advocating for a policy that may have led to bin Laden escaping again.
The people who know Joe the best, not surprisingly, worry for America’s future if he actually wins. Former Obama Secretary of Defense Bob Gates recognized Biden’s poor decision-making and wrote in his book, as reported by ABC News, that Biden was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Biden has, in the past, advocated for giving foreign aid to Iran, surrendering to the Chinese on trade and developing a less-friendly relationship with Israel. Biden was consistently wrong on the most important foreign policy challenges that America faced when he was vice president, and Americans should not entrust him with the most powerful job, to protect America.
{mossecondads}Many Democrats don’t seem excited about Biden’s campaign, because they want a younger version of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to capture the nomination. Progressives are chomping at the bit to take down Biden, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who has fired the first torpedo across the bow of the Biden campaign. The leader of the socialist wing of her party is mad at Biden because he was too slow to embrace her “Green New Deal” plan and the democratic socialist agenda. Democratic socialists are the real power in the party, and they really don’t like Joe. It is possible that the socialists will take Biden out in 2020’s primary or that, even if he wins, Biden might lose significant support from the left-wing base of his own party.
When you look at Biden’s bad record on winning elections, his terrible judgment on foreign policy and his opposition by the far left within his party, one can see another Democratic political implosion on the horizon. Yet, this all might be academic, because even if Biden were the perfect candidate and won the Democratic nomination, he would lose to President Trump, who has led the U.S. economy to historic lows in unemployment and to record growth.
Corey R. Lewandowski is President Trump’s former campaign manager and co-host of the podcast “Deep in the Swamp.” He is a senior adviser to the Great America Committee, Vice President Mike Pence‘s political action committee. He is co-author of the new book, “Trump’s Enemies,” and of “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency.” Follow him on Twitter @CLewandowski_.