The Washington Monthly

July 22, 2003

BIDEN VS. DEAN....Ezra Klein has an analysis over at Not Geniuses of the possibility of Joe Biden running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and emails to wonder what I think of it.

Basically, Ezra thinks that Biden, as a nice hawkish centrist, would be able to beat the rest of the mainstream field early on and then duke it out with the good doctor down the stretch as the Anybody-But-Dean candidate. Biden thinks he would be able to beat Dean in such a contest, while Ezra thinks Dean would kick his ass. (And Ezra better think that, since he's working for the Dean campaign.)

So what do I think of that? Beats me, really. I mostly just have a dim memory of Biden running in 1988, and while I imagine that 16 years is long enough to put paid to the whole plagiarism scandal that sunk him that year, my recollection is that he wasn't really setting anyone on fire that year anyway. If I can be a bit mean, he's sort of like the Lamar Alexander of the Democratic party: he seems good on paper, but on the campaign trail he somehow ends up looking a bit ridiculous for some reason.

Anyway, check out Ezra's post and decide for yourself. I'd be curious to hear what commenters old enough to remember the 1988 campaign think about all this.

—Kevin Drum 3:36 PM Permalink | Trackbacks

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