CLINTON VS. BIDEN – AT 9:55 A.M. ET:  It's on.  And it will be deliciously vicious.  From The Politico: 

Joe Biden isn’t running for president yet, but Hillary Clinton’s already running against him.
Clinton and her aides have their line—the vice president deserves the time and space to decide, they repeat over and over and over—and so far they’ve held off the heavy artillery.

Instead, they’re firing warning shots. Tightly targeted warning shots.

The hints from the campaign come in heavy: Biden would be to Clinton’s right if he ran, more out of touch with the party’s progressive base. Surrogates have sounded off, questioning his chances and his political abilities, wondering if he’d be up to the job. Clinton even leapt in herself, bringing him up out of nowhere as she spoke to a woman in a diner last week in New Hampshire to knock him for how disappointing he’d been when they were working on the bankruptcy bill in the Senate. That was followed by her campaign chair John Podesta, sprinkling a little of his own shade in front of the pro-Clinton Priorities super PAC in New York—it’s already too late for Biden to mount a real challenge, and he’s not going to decide for a few more weeks on top of that.

They’ve stepped up the roll-out of their endorsements and organization. Their operation is just so massive and well put together, they want Biden and anyone considering supporting him to think, there’s just no space left for him.

So sure, take your time, is the message people in and around the campaign seem to be sending—but if you end up at yes, you’re going to get hurt. Saint on the sidelines is far different from actual candidate, they want him to realize, when they and everyone else unleash on him, raking through every gaffe and every vote in 36 years in the Senate, digging through his personal life. In the campaign headquarters and in Clinton's wider orbit, they take care to say how much they like him, how much they respect him, don't want to say a bad word about him. But “Should a man like Joe Biden run?” is going to be a very different question for them than “Should a man like Joe Biden be president?”

COMMENT:  Very well said.  The Clintons are hardly known for ethics, and will rough Biden up should he get into the race.  I have no doubt that the gender card will be played. 

It can get very ugly.  Biden is a decent man, but he can get very tough when he wants to.  I seriously doubt his judgment, especially in foreign policy.  And he is aging.  Despite the fact that Obama picked him for vice president, he has never been a hot commodity within the Democratic Party.  He has no appeal to the "diversity" crowd, for example.   But he's known on both sides of the aisle as a man of character, and the contrast with Slick Hillie could be an advantage.

I watched some videos of Hillary Clinton yesterday.  She is an awful campaigner, at times weird and seemingly detached from the world.

The whole thing is fascinating.  One of the most interesting political years since the great Reagan year of 1980.

September 22, 2015