Day: October 17, 2015

Gabriel Sherman at the Daily Intelligencer says we are already months into the Biden campaign:

Joe Biden is running for president — a fact that has been obvious, and true, for weeks. He spent the week continuing to phone key Democrats in early voting states and huddle with his kitchen cabinet, which includes his chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti; message man Mike Donilon; longtime adviser Ted Kaufman; and sister Valerie Biden Owens. He spoke with Harold Schaitberger, the general president of the powerful firefighters union, and won his endorsement, should he declare. According to a source, he told Schaitberger that “all the political pieces are in place.” In effect, Biden has been running since Maureen Dowd published a Times column reporting how Biden’s 46-year-old son Beau implored his father to challenge Clinton for the nomination shortly before Beau died of brain cancer. The campaign picked up steam the following day when Alcorn, who had been a top strategist for Beau’s gubernatorial run in Delaware, joined the super-PAC. His arrival transformed what had been the fledgling brainchild of a 27-year-old former Obama volunteer into a serious campaign-in-waiting. Alcorn says they are “well on their way” to raising $3 million and have grown to 20 paid staffers that include veteran field operatives in Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida and a digital-data team. In September, it hired Mark Putnam, a veteran of Obama’s 2012 media team, to produce television ads. Of course, what the Draft Biden PAC hasn’t had is Biden himself, and many Democrats believe that the vice-president has missed his window — that the debate went so well for Clinton she has effectively boxed him out. But this analysis assumes that Biden has been deciding whether he should enter. In reality, Biden is choosing what kind of campaign to run: an active one, in which he positions himself as a Clinton alternative, or a passive one that presents him as an alternative to Bernie Sanders or any of the other three non-­candidates who were onstage in Las Vegas.

Jeb Bush is about to walk into a haymaker. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump stated the fact that that George W. Bush was the President when we were attacked by Islamic extremists.

“He was President,” Trump said. “Blame him, or don’t blame him, but he was President. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.” “I think I’m much more competent than all of them,” Trump said. “Say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” Trump told Bloomberg.

Jeb Bush's responded with the threadbare lie that his brother “kept us safe.” I don't see how this isn't terrible news for the faltering Bush campaign. The more Trump reminds the GOP base of Bush;s incompetence, and the more Jed tries to respond to those attacks by sticking his fingers in his ear holes and chanting "He kept us safe" the more Bush looks like a complete buffoon.