Just when big Democrat donors were about to write off the 2020 presidential campaign, along comes Biden’s pal, Larry Rasky, to pull Joe Biden’s languishing campaign from the brink. On Tuesday Rasky filed the paperwork creating a new Super PAC called “Unite the Country” and brought in some heavy hitters to join him in the rescue effort.
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden (shown) had denounced (along with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others) “big money influence” in politics but, no doubt out of desperation, changed his mind last week. In explaining the flip-flop, Biden’s campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield put on the best spin she could:
Donald Trump has decided that the general election has already begun. In this time of political crisis, it is not surprising that those who are dedicated to defeating Donald Trump are organizing in every way permitted by current law to bring an end to his disastrous presidency.
Biden himself tried to put some distance between Rasky’s filing and his previous campaign promises to eliminate “big money” influence in politics if he were elected president. In an interview with MSNBC, Biden called Rasky’s move a “grassroots response” to his campaign’s financial difficulties, as though he knew nothing about the move until Rasky’s filing. Said Biden, “This is an understandable response from Democrats who desperately do not want to see [Trump] re-elected president. My guess is they [those guys over there with whom I have nothing to do and who are doing this entirely on their own without any support from me] would have done the same thing for anybody who was attacked in the Democratic primary if they were leading.”
This is a canard of the first order. Rasky, currently the CEO of lobbying firm Rasky Partners, served in Biden’s two previous presidential quests in 1997 and in 2008. In 1988, he served as Biden’s press secretary while in 2007 in joined Biden’s campaign as its communications director.
Joining Rasky are other Democrat operatives with links to previous Biden efforts to gain the White House. Steve Schale, a political strategist in Florida, was hired by the “Obama for America” campaign in 2008. In 2015, Schale helped Draft Biden, a Super PAC supporting a potential presidential bid by Biden.
Julianna Smoot has also joined Rasky’s rescue team. She served as deputy manager of Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, raising more money for that campaign than any other such campaign in U.S. history. In the past she held similar positions for Democrat Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and Harry Reid of Nevada.
To imply that Biden knew nothing about the movement to save his foundering presidential campaign from a third ignominious disaster is typical Biden strategy, using “plausible deniability” to explain his flip-flop.
That reversal has outraged Biden’s rivals. Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, declared that since “the former vice president has been unable to generate grassroots support … his campaign is endorsing an effort to buy the primary through a super PAC that can rake in unlimited cash from billionaires and corporations.”
Those billionaires and corporations are going to have to get busy writing big checks to catch up to the Trump campaign. Biden’s campaign cupboard is bare while the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are sitting on $156 million in the bank and that’s after already paying for several million dollars’ worth of ads criticizing Biden in the early voting states.
Elizabeth Warren’s brief lead at the head of the pack in recent polling was short-lived. In the last 10 days, she has bested Biden in just one of the six polls taken, leaving her an average, according to Real Clear Politics, of nearly six percentage points behind Biden, with Sanders a distant third at 10 points behind Biden.
With the likely insertion of millions of dollars of desperately needed funds into the nearly moribund Biden campaign, it is likely that his lead will at least be maintained if not widened going into the first of the Democrat primaries early next year.
Image of Joe Biden: Screenshot of Joe Biden for President
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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