The Biden campaign has a message for the media and his detractors in light of an ongoing series of campaign gaffes and missteps. The new angle is that it’s not his fault he’s being perceived the way he is. After all, every political candidate makes a gaffe or two every now and then right? As the campaign clings to its front runner status while Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders appear to be closing the gap, a top Biden adviser speaks out, as reported by Politico.
“I don’t know of anybody who has taken as sustained and vitriolic a negative pounding as Biden and who has come through it with the strength he has, so why isn’t the argument not that he’s a ‘fragile front runner,’ but instead why is this guy so strong? How is he able to withstand this? Because it is unrelenting. Every story that has been written about Biden for a month has been negative! I would ask Warren and Sanders and these folks: He’s been pummeled for months. For months! So why is he going to fall apart now?”
Seen below in a video posted to Twitter shows one of Biden’s recent and perhaps more harmless gaffes where he accidentally refers to President Donald Trump as ‘Donald Hump’. See Tweet below:
#NEW: Joe Biden refers to Pres. Trump as “Donald Hump,” calling the gaffe a “Freudian slip.” @OANN
— Chloe Salsameda (@ChloeSalsameda) September 7, 2019
pic.twitter.com/2yWy1cvZcj
The question among Democrat party supporters considering Warren, Biden, Sanders, or perhaps even Harris or Buttigieg seems to be, is the problem with Joe Biden just a cosmetic one? Is it a matter of young voters expecting a clean-cut Barack Obama type speaker? Absolutely, an argument can be made that although superficial, someone with the ability to be charismatic and clear can definitely garner more popularity and support than the next guy (or gal) with similar values, but less personality. But if you put that all aside though, other questions remain.
Seemingly though, the bigger question is, if you can put aside superficial preferences, does Biden have a real problem with getting his message out? It doesn’t really matter if he has serious health issues, which have been implied, and it doesn’t really matter if his gaffes are just from standard forgetfulness that comes with old age. When you are the President of the United States, whether you’re as boring as Ben Stein pretends to be in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off‘, or as bombastic and opinionated as President Trump is, you need to be able to get your message out clearly and concisely, have a clear cut set of values, and sell yourself as a viable candidate.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, his team and base would like you to believe that the negative media hits he has taken for his missteps such as forgetting critical facts to war hero stories told on the campaign trail, or getting a little too touchy-feely with people also on the trail, and constantly tripping over his words are simply the news outlets being unfair to him. This being the case, the fact that he is still in the lead in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries shows his strengths, not weaknesses is the narrative.
Nevermind that he’s dropped 10 points from his high in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary polling averages according to Real Clear Politics. Nevermind that some polls have even shown him virtually neck and neck with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren such as the national Monmouth University poll from August 26th. In another poll, ‘CBS News Battleground Tracker’ poll taken across 18 primary and caucus states show that Warren is one point ahead of Biden in the video below:
Can the 76-year-old Democrat keep his lead and prove his theory of strength in the face of a normally left-leaning media he believes is against him? Stay tuned.
