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The Washington Post has a story today that Joe Biden is moving all of his national campaign staff to Iowa.
Among those being sent to the Hawkeye State: Danny O'Brien, longtime Biden chief of staff and current national political director; Valerie Biden Owens, the Senator's sister and one of the leading surrogates for the campaign; Missy Owens, deputy national political director; and Annie Tomasini, a member of Biden's national communications operation.Biden has received a lot of support from State Legislators and has some momentum on his side. Marc Ambinder takes a look at Biden's strategy to gain this support from State Legislators.
At the start of this campaign Joe Biden was at the bottom of my list. However, after seeing him three times in person on the campaign trail and his straight forward responses in the debate, he is quickly moved up into my top 4. From talking to Democratic activists around Iowa, I have found many people are seriously thinking about supporting Biden.After he announced his presidential bid, Biden’s team drew up a five-point plan to win legislative endorsements. First, Biden would ask state legislators to let him host an event. No endorsement needed, just an event. Then he’d ask the legislators to judge for themselves how their constituents responded to Biden. Third, he’s stress his Iraq message – “a broader policy offering than they normally expected,” O’Brien says. Fourth, he’d stress electability, drawing an implicit contrast with other Democrats in the race. Iowa Democrats, Biden and his aides believes, are hair-trigger-sensitive to electability arguments. And fifth, he’d work as many rooms as he could, focusing on delegate-rich areas and exploiting resevoirs of support that exist from 1988 last sojourn as a presidential candidate.
These include blue collar cities like Davenport and Dubuque and a wide strip of towns along the Mississippi river.
Biden deliberately chooses not to pander to the party’s liberal base, which his staff believes is a lot smaller than their loud voices would indicate.
The operation is pretty lean; there’s very little excess fat. But Biden will have manage to visit all 99 counties by early November. He has nine field offices and 23 full-time staffers – more than some Democrats (and Rudy Giuliani) but fewer, by orders of magnitude, than Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.
2 comments:
After watching him during the Roberts and Alito confirmation hearings I told myself there was no way I would support Biden. Not to put to fine a point on it, but he likes the sound of his own voice a little to much and his sense of humor can come off as more than a little smug. After hearing him in person, and compairing him to the other candidates, Biden is growing on me.
I think Biden is right when he says he is electable over the republicans. I'm not sure, however, he nominatable over his fellow democrats. His previous presidential run doesn't help either.
A lot of Democrats I know of are very interested in Biden. He does well among the over-50 crowd.
In December, when the undecideds start making up their minds, there will be a big opportunity for Biden.
I also expect him to get some newspaper endorsements, especially from the more conservative papers.
Personally, I prefer Biden to either Clinton or Richardson, although I would still rank Edwards, Dodd and Obama above Biden.
desmoinesdem
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