Bernie Sanders should be more worried than Clinton.
So should Republicans. He'd be stronger than Clinton.
I agree, but people don't seem to see that any more than they see Kasich as the strongest possible Republican.
Few top Democrats have ever been as extremely disliked among all political afiliations as Biden. Then I mean among both Democrats, independents and Republicans. Except for black Democrats, there has not been one single loyal group for Biden during the past 7-8 years. And black Democrats obviously only support him cause he's Obama's surrogate. Not even Kerry or Gore ever came slightly close to the extent of very strong hate that Biden has had to support consistantly for the past 8 years. While Obama's numbers have gone up and down, Biden's numbers have constantly been negative all untill he went under radar after his son died of cancer. Only then did his popularity hit net positive for the first time since at least 2006-07. And someone still thinks that he might be the strongest champion Democrats have seen since Kennedy or something? That's pretty trollish, to say the extremely least. It's like claiming that Cruz or Santorum would be the strongest GOP card since Eisenhower. Makes absolutely no sense.
I don't believe that Biden's real negatives are what you say. He's been a loyal VP and an involved VP, and he's led the way on a number of issues. I don't support SSM, but most Democrats do, and Biden was ahead of Obama on the issue. Indeed, it was Biden sticking his neck out and getting ahead on the issue that forced Obama to follow Biden's lead. He's been a leader on Obama's controversial initiatives, but he hasn't gotten nailed with bad publicity as Hillary has with Benghazi.
Biden's a guy that is disliked in some quarters, but people don't really know why they dislike him. It's kind of where Richard Nixon was in 1967; a lot of folks, including a lot of Republicans, didn't really like him, but they couldn't really say why this was so. In a key campaign memo, Harry Trelaven, Nixon's 1968 advertising man, spoke about how there were many perceived negatives about Nixon that he did not think were still applicable. In that category, he placed the "Tricky Dick" image, the reputation for meanness and ruthlessness, and he was correct in that these issues weren't really of concern to people at that time. That's what I think of Biden; many of the negatives associated with Biden in the past have faded away, and aren't what folks think about in Biden today.
More importantly, the VP job enabled all Americans (especially all Democrats) to get to know Biden, and I believe that among Democrats, he's a positive. Biden's big obstacle is the degree to which the Democrats have been "all in" on Hillary so far before the actual start of the primaries. The real negative for Biden is that if he challenges Clinton and her numbers go down vis a vis the GOP candidates, he'll be viewed as a guy who's screwing up the Democratic victory, rightly or wrongly. That's not Biden's doing, but it's the place he's at right now.
