{"id":10437,"date":"2015-08-04T16:40:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T16:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10437"},"modified":"2015-08-04T16:40:38","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T16:40:38","slug":"vps-ego-might-keep-him-out-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10437","title":{"rendered":"VP’s ego might keep him out of race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My desire to see Vice President Joe Biden join the Democratic Party presidential primary race remains intact.<\/p>\n

I want him to run and I want him to\u00a0provide a serious challenge to presumed frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton.<\/p>\n

However, I haven’t been around Washington, D.C., the way the writer of an attached blog — Carl Leubsdorf — has been, so I respect his notion that the vice president has some serious hurdles to clear in deciding whether to run.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/opinion\/latest-columns\/20150803-carl-p.-leubsdorf-8-problems-that-await-a-biden-candidacy.ece<\/p>\n

Hurdle no.\u00a03 jumps out at me. It’s Biden’s presidential campaign track record.<\/p>\n

Does he want to be known as someone who’s tried three times to get his party’s nomination, only to fall flat on his face? I doubt it. His ego won’t allow it.<\/p>\n

I mention his ego because of something the late Sen. George McGovern — for whom I cast my first vote for president in 1972 —\u00a0once wrote. He said the first thing a successful politician needs is a massive ego. That’s where it starts, he said.<\/p>\n

I am betting Joe Biden’s ego doesn’t take a back seat to anyone else’s.<\/p>\n

He once sought the 1988 Democratic nomination, but got derailed before the primaries began when it was revealed that he had lifted huge portions of his stump speech from a British pol, Neil Kinnock. Americans laughed at the then-senator from Delaware as a copy-cat.<\/p>\n

He ran again in 2008, but got swamped by Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama\u00a0then rewarded his former foe by picking him to run for vice president — and then after the election he turned to the other rival, Clinton, and appointed her secretary of state.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton has enlisted an enormous political army to assist her. Biden is facing a serious challenge in getting up to speed relatively late in the primary game.<\/p>\n

The ego thing well might prevent him taking the leap a third time.<\/p>\n

Unless … something happens to Clinton’s presumed invincibility. As Leubsdorf writes:<\/p>\n

“But a more realistic path for him to become the Democratic nominee might be to avoid a divisive fight, back Clinton and, if any of several ticking time bombs sinks her candidacy, step in then to save the Democratic day.”<\/p>\n

That, indeed, would provide plenty of balm for the vice president’s ego.<\/p>\n\n

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My desire to see Vice President Joe Biden join the Democratic Party presidential primary race remains intact. I want him to run and I want him to\u00a0provide a serious challenge to presumed frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton. However, I haven’t been around Washington, D.C., the way the writer of an attached blog — Carl Leubsdorf — … Continue reading VP’s ego might keep him out of race<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[46,57,540,1893,2139,2505],"class_list":["post-10437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","tag-1988-campaign","tag-2008-campaign","tag-barack-obama","tag-george-mcgovern","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-joe-biden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}