"The core values of this
nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made
America America is at stake," the former vice president said in his
announcement
Hours after officially
entering the 2020 Democratic presidential field Thursday morning, former Vice
President Joe Biden is expected to head to the Philadelphia home of Comcast
executive David Cohen for a big-dollar fundraiser that will reportedly be attended
by Democratic lawmakers, the CEO of insurance giant Independence Blue Cross,
and other high-powered party players.
Biden launched his
presidential bid with a video condemning President Donald Trump's response to
the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville and calling the 2020 election
"a battle for the soul of this nation."
"The core values of this
nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made
America America is at stake," Biden said. "That's why today I'm
announcing my candidacy for president of the United States."
As Politico reported
on the eve of Biden's 2020 announcement, the former vice president
"raised the alarm about fundraising" in a conference call with top
donors, expressing the need to have a big first-day haul.
"The money's
important," Biden reportedly said during the call, according to a
anonymous participant who recounted the remarks to Politico. "We're
going to be judged by what we can do in the first 24 hours, the first
week."
While Biden has vowed to join
most other 2020 Democratic candidates in rejecting campaign contributions from
lobbyists, HuffPost's Kevin Robillard pointed
out that Biden's planned fundraiser with corporate executives Thursday
evening "shows the limitations of such a pledge."
Though Cohen is technically
not a registered lobbyist, he directs Comcast's lobbying operations—a
distinction that critics said allows
him to skirt federal lobbying regulations.
According
to the Philadelphia Business Journal, "Cohen sent an email
to potential contributors Wednesday soliciting donations of $2,800, the maximum
federal primary contribution for the event."
Politico first published
the invitation for the large-dollar fundraiser:
As Sludge's Donald
Shaw reported,
Comcast "has been a leading voice in the telecommunication industry's
efforts to oppose net neutrality rules, spending millions on lobbying against
laws at the federal and state levels that would prohibit internet service
providers (ISPs) from giving priority treatment to certain types of
traffic."
"In 2006, when he was a
senator from Delaware serving on the Judiciary Committee, Biden said that he
did not think net neutrality rules were needed," Shaw noted.
The list of executives and
other wealthy donors expected to attend Biden's first fundraiser as a 2020
presidential candidate sparked concern:
While Biden clearly joins the
crowded race with top name recognition, the status as the last-serving
Democratic vice president, and the frontrunner in most national polling, it has
been widely noted that he also begins his third campaign for the presidency—he
ran unsuccessfully in both 1988 and 2008—with an enormous amount of political
baggage.
As columnist Jim Newell detailed at Slate on
Thursday:
Biden's biggest challenge in
the primary will be a compromised past spanning nearly 50 years. The vetting
process he'll face in the Democratic Party of 2019 will not be even close to
the vetting he faced during his last campaign in 2008—and, let's face it, as a
middling-to-lower-tier candidate then, he didn't face much vetting at all. The
crime bill that he authored in 1994 is considered by the modern iteration of
the party to have been an embarrassment, as is his handling of the Clarence
Thomas Supreme Court nomination. Some of his anti-busing rhetoric from the
1970s was, even by the standards of 1970s anti-busing rhetoric, astonishing. As
a senator who for 36 years represented Delaware, a small fiefdom run by banks,
his economic record has more than a few blemishes, such as his support for the
2005 bankruptcy reform bill, one of the slimiest pieces of legislation passed
this century. In the first presidential primary since 2004 where past votes
regarding the Iraq war shouldn't be an issue among major candidates, simply
because it was so long ago, there's Joe Biden, with a vote for the Iraq War on
his record.
The size of the field is a
representation of the candidates' belief that all of this will sink Biden,
unlocking the tentative support of roughly one-third of the party for the
taking. The field’s bet on Biden's fallibility is now shared among the punditry
too. Everything Biden does will be interpreted through the same knowing lens
that he's out of his element and it's a pity no one was able to dissuade him
from launching this last, egotistical crusade. That was the interpretation
when, in his first public appearance after allegations of inappropriate
touching, he cracked a couple of jokes about how he had gotten permission to
give hugs. Even the delay in his launch this week prompted another round of
head-shaking, when his initial plan to kick off the campaign on Wednesday in
Charlottesville, Virginia, followed by a couple of rallies in Pennsylvania, was
scrapped.
Biden's campaign launch comes
as most
early polls show the former vice president with a slight
lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the Democratic nomination.
The former vice president
addressed the allegations of inappropriate touching in a video earlier this
month, vowing to "be more mindful and respectful of people's personal
space" in the future.
"That's my responsibility
and I will meet it," Biden said.
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