In his first 48 hours as an official presidential candidate, Joe Biden confirmed his status as the problematic frontrunner in the Democratic field.
The former vice president raised more money than any other candidate on his first day, but gave a meandering and at times waffly performance in his first television interview since entering the race.
Biden’s campaign announced on Friday, local time, that he had pulled in US$6.3 million on his first 24 hours – topping the $US6.1 million raised by Texan Beto O’Rourke of Texas and $US5.9 million by Bernie Sanders.
It wasn’t guaranteed that Biden would do so well given the 76-year old hasn’t run for elected office in over a decade, a time before small online donations by ordinary voters became so important.
Biden’s team announced that 96,926 people had contributed to his campaign on day one, and that 65,000 of them were not previously on his email list of supporters.
This suggests his launch advertisement – which leaned heavily into an anti-Trump message and featured images on white supremacists – resonated with primary voters.
That was the good news.
It was a different story when Biden sat down for an interview on The View for an extended discussion about his bid for president.
One could hardly imagine a more welcoming environment for Biden. The View is not known for its hard-hitting political interviews and the all-female hosts had raved about Biden’s launch video the day before.
Yet the appearance was not the slam dunk it should have been.
Asked how a Biden White House would be different to an Obama White House, he gave an extended riff about how well the two got along before offering this vague answer.
“I hope that I’ve learned from him and that relationship,” Biden said.
“On a philosophic basis, it’s about moving to the future.
“It’s not about recreating what we did. It’s about taking the same decency and the philosophy we had – the political philosophy – and taking it into the future.”
Asked why he was a candidate of the future, and not the past, he spent a long time talking about his work in the Senate in the 1990s before saying it would not be long until people are “flying across America in a matter of less than an hour and a half”.
It took the hosts multiple tries to get him to apologise directly to women who recently came forward to say they thought he had invaded their personal space.
And he appeared defensive when asked about his handling of the Anita Hill hearings, when she made allegations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
But Biden will have to put in a far sharper, policy-savvy, performance when he gets on stage for the first Democratic primary debate in June. Platitudes and generalities will only get him so far.
Source: The Age
