Biden - good or bad for the Dems?
Posted: August 2nd, 2015, 5:40 pmand LOL at this....“I was trying to come up with a rationale for her candidacy — and I couldn’t do it,” Cooper tells Yahoo News
After raising $1 million for Barack Obama during his two presidential runs, New York businessman Jon Cooper was exactly the kind of high-powered political “bundler” Hillary Clinton wanted on her team during this year’s run.
But after agreeing to serve as a “Hillstarter” — as the Clinton campaign had dubbed its elite fundraisers — Cooper sat down at his computer a few months ago to write a fundraising pitch for the former secretary of state … and froze.
“I was trying to come up with a rationale for her candidacy — and I couldn’t do it,” Cooper tells Yahoo News. Clinton, he concluded, was “too calculating, too cautious, too controlled.”
So now Cooper, who owns a large manufacturing firm on suburban Long Island and had previously raised money for Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, has signed on as the national finance chair for the Draft Biden Committee — one of a small but growing group of Democratic moneymen that is trying to prod the vice president into shaking up the Democratic race by making one more run for the presidency.
“When we started a few months ago, everybody thought we were tilting at windmills,” said William Pierce, executive director of the Draft Biden committee, a super-PAC that has raised more than $110,000 since last March and collected more than 180,000 signatures for online petitions. “But just in the last few days, we’re seeing a lot of momentum. And if [Biden’s] answer was no, he could have shut this down like that.”
The group expects its momentum to continue this week with an announcement of an expanded staff, while another newly enlisted veteran Democratic bundler, Howie Mandel, a Los Angeles physician, hosts a Draft Biden event at a West Hollywood restaurant. Mandel said he has invited Democratic fundraisers and community leaders — including a few prominent Hollywood figures — to talk about a “how we can convince the vice president to run.”
Driving that conversation: new poll numbers showing Clinton’s standing steadily slipping since she announced her candidacy last April, with 57 percent of the electorate now viewing her as neither honest nor trustworthy, according to a Quinnipiac survey. “We don’t know what she really believes. She’s not trustworthy, and she’s not authentic,” Mandel said. “I think there’s an 80 percent chance she’s going to implode.”
At Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn, campaign officials are closely monitoring the Draft Biden effort, tapping their own sources to determine the vice president’s intentions — and in an effort to reassure donors, aggressively pushing back on the poll numbers. “She’s been under relentless focus and under a lot of attacks for the past few months,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director.
But questions about honesty and trustworthiness are beside the point, she argues. “That’s not the question voters have in their heads when they decide who to vote for,” she says. “It’s who is fighting for me, and who has solutions for the American people. She’s still the person who is most likely to be the next president.”
Whether Biden will actually make the plunge — and whether he can prevail if he did — is still very unclear. The vice president, 72, has told aides he plans to decide by the end of the summer, a timetable that was pushed back at least in part by the tragic death of his son Beau from cancer.
“The Biden family is going through a difficult time right now,” said Kendra Berkoff, the vice president’s press secretary. “Any speculation about the views of the vice president or his family about his political future is premature and inappropriate.” She added in a later email that Biden “is focused on his family and immersed in his work.”
But donors like Cooper and Mandel — as well as political operatives and allies — are seeing increasing signs that the vice president is edging closer. Family members, especially his son Hunter and his wife, Kathleen, have been quietly promoting the idea that he’s prepared to enter the race, according to multiple sources who have spoken to them. Beau Biden also urged his father to run shortly before he died in May, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
After raising $1 million for Barack Obama during his two presidential runs, New York businessman Jon Cooper was exactly the kind of high-powered political “bundler” Hillary Clinton wanted on her team during this year’s run.
But after agreeing to serve as a “Hillstarter” — as the Clinton campaign had dubbed its elite fundraisers — Cooper sat down at his computer a few months ago to write a fundraising pitch for the former secretary of state … and froze.
“I was trying to come up with a rationale for her candidacy — and I couldn’t do it,” Cooper tells Yahoo News. Clinton, he concluded, was “too calculating, too cautious, too controlled.”
So now Cooper, who owns a large manufacturing firm on suburban Long Island and had previously raised money for Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, has signed on as the national finance chair for the Draft Biden Committee — one of a small but growing group of Democratic moneymen that is trying to prod the vice president into shaking up the Democratic race by making one more run for the presidency.
“When we started a few months ago, everybody thought we were tilting at windmills,” said William Pierce, executive director of the Draft Biden committee, a super-PAC that has raised more than $110,000 since last March and collected more than 180,000 signatures for online petitions. “But just in the last few days, we’re seeing a lot of momentum. And if [Biden’s] answer was no, he could have shut this down like that.”
The group expects its momentum to continue this week with an announcement of an expanded staff, while another newly enlisted veteran Democratic bundler, Howie Mandel, a Los Angeles physician, hosts a Draft Biden event at a West Hollywood restaurant. Mandel said he has invited Democratic fundraisers and community leaders — including a few prominent Hollywood figures — to talk about a “how we can convince the vice president to run.”
Driving that conversation: new poll numbers showing Clinton’s standing steadily slipping since she announced her candidacy last April, with 57 percent of the electorate now viewing her as neither honest nor trustworthy, according to a Quinnipiac survey. “We don’t know what she really believes. She’s not trustworthy, and she’s not authentic,” Mandel said. “I think there’s an 80 percent chance she’s going to implode.”
At Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn, campaign officials are closely monitoring the Draft Biden effort, tapping their own sources to determine the vice president’s intentions — and in an effort to reassure donors, aggressively pushing back on the poll numbers. “She’s been under relentless focus and under a lot of attacks for the past few months,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director.
But questions about honesty and trustworthiness are beside the point, she argues. “That’s not the question voters have in their heads when they decide who to vote for,” she says. “It’s who is fighting for me, and who has solutions for the American people. She’s still the person who is most likely to be the next president.”
Whether Biden will actually make the plunge — and whether he can prevail if he did — is still very unclear. The vice president, 72, has told aides he plans to decide by the end of the summer, a timetable that was pushed back at least in part by the tragic death of his son Beau from cancer.
“The Biden family is going through a difficult time right now,” said Kendra Berkoff, the vice president’s press secretary. “Any speculation about the views of the vice president or his family about his political future is premature and inappropriate.” She added in a later email that Biden “is focused on his family and immersed in his work.”
But donors like Cooper and Mandel — as well as political operatives and allies — are seeing increasing signs that the vice president is edging closer. Family members, especially his son Hunter and his wife, Kathleen, have been quietly promoting the idea that he’s prepared to enter the race, according to multiple sources who have spoken to them. Beau Biden also urged his father to run shortly before he died in May, according to a Wall Street Journal report.