Joe Biden won the Presidency because the coronavirus enabled him to ‘hide his biggest weakness, which is himself’, a new book claims.
The President did almost everything wrong during the 2020 election and ran a lethargic campaign that nearly went bankrupt.
The claims are in ‘Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency’ by Jonathan Allen, a senior political analyst for NBC News, and Amie Parnes, a senior correspondent with The Hill.
By simply hiding out at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, while Donald Trump mishandled Covid-19 meant Biden was able to look presidential by comparison.
One Biden aide, quote the authors, put the campaign strategy in blunt terms: ‘You put your dumb uncle in the basement.’
Top Biden adviser Anita Dunn said that ‘Covid was the best thing that happened to him’ because it covered up his failings.
A new book claims Joe Biden did almost everything wrong during the 2020 election and ran a lethargic campaign that nearly went bankrupt
The authors claim he was only able to win the presidency due to Donald Trump’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic
Allen and Parnes have written numerous behind-the-scenes political books including Shattered, about Hillary Clinton’s doomed 2016 Presidential run.
The book, which is published by Crown, says Barack Obama refused to support Biden even though he served as his Vice President for eight years because he feared he was a ‘tragicomic caricature of an aging politician having his last hurrah.’
And it claims Biden was so out of touch he didn’t see why his habit of touching women was a problem because he ‘didn’t think he did anything wrong.’
Biden had previously run for the Presidency twice before he entered the fray for the 2020 election after becoming incensed at Trump’s equivocation about white supremacy.
The claims are in ‘Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency’ by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
He trailed in the Democrat primaries and lost the first three states but a thumping win in South Carolina started an improbable turnaround for the 78-year-old, who went on to become the oldest President in history.
Allen and Parnes say that Biden won the election because he was a safe choice that voters settled on despite their lack of enthusiasm for him.
They write that Democrats ‘weren’t willing to take a chance’ on anyone who might jeopardize the most important mission: get Trump out of office.
The book says: ‘Everything else, he’d (Biden) gotten wrong. He’d run a lousy campaign, flubbed debates, spent so much money on Iowa and New Hampshire that he teetered on the edge of insolvency, lost three straight states to start the primary, and allowed himself to be defined by his frailties.’
Biden won despite having a ‘bland message and a blank agenda’, as ‘Lucky’ puts it.
At a time when the Democrat party was being roiled by progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Black Lives Matter movement, Biden ‘offered no revolution, no reformation, and no fresh look.’
‘Lucky’ says: ‘Factions of his party would want to superimpose their priorities on him because, on most issues, he was more reactive and cautious than his fellow Democrats. Amid a series of schisms in his party – the populists against the elites, the progressives against the centrists, and the next-generation leaders against the old guard – Biden had stood mostly to the side. Rather than a path forward, he proposed backtracking to the pre-Trump era.’
Trump’s internal polls showed that he expected to win the 2020 election with 400 electoral college votes before the coronavirus pandemic, a figure that Allen and Parnes say was probably ‘optimistic.’
Covid-19 changed everything and Trump’s biggest challenge showed he was not up to the job so Biden did not break one of the golden rules in politics: never get in the way of an imploding rival.
The coronavirus gave Biden a ‘justification to lay low’ but it played to his advantage as he could wait it out in the basement of his home in Wilmington.
One Trump adviser said: ‘They used coronavirus as an excuse to keep him in the basement, and it was smart.
‘Biden was able to hide his biggest weakness, which is himself. And he did it with an excuse that sounded responsible.’
Barack Obama refused to support Biden even though he served as his Vice President for eight years, the authors write
Obama reportedly feared Biden was a ‘tragicomic caricature of an aging politician having his last hurrah’
Even Anita Dunn, the Biden adviser who has been called the ‘Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump’, admitted in private: ‘Covid was the best thing that happened to him.’
Keeping Biden locked up at his home proved to be controversial and one associated described it as: ‘You put your dumb uncle in the basement.’
From there Biden released badly produced videos in which he condemned Trump and laid out his vision for America, but the poor quality of the early footage was embarrassing.
‘Lucky’ says there was a ‘hostage-video quality’ to one broadcast because it was so dark.
One Biden confidant who watched on television said: ‘I cringed the entire time.
‘Who puts a podium in a basement rec room? It was awful. It just looked so bad. He looked like he didn’t know what he was doing.’
Among the issues that threatened Biden’s campaign were his habit of being handsy, something he claimed was his way of empathizing with people.
In April last year Tara Reade, a former junior staffer in Biden’s Senate office, accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1993.
Reade said: ‘His hands went underneath my clothing and he was touching me in my private areas and without my consent.’
When she pulled away from Biden he pointed his finger at her and said: ‘You’re nothing to me, nothing.’
Biden denied it but a slew of videos of him went viral including one showing him giving a Senator’s daughter a creepy looking kiss.
According to ‘Lucky’, in private Biden didn’t see what all the fuss was.
Joe Biden accuser Tara Reade, a former junior staffer in Biden’s Senate office, accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1993
Anita Dunn (left) the Biden adviser who has been called the ‘Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump’, admitted in private: ‘Covid was the best thing that happened to him’. Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, (right) one of Biden’s Presidential campaign managers who is now his deputy chief of staff, joined his team out of pity and headed up his Nevada operation
One longtime ally said: ‘I don’t think he understood it on some level.
‘He constantly thought ‘Yeah, so what? What’s the big deal?’ He needed a lot of convincing. Every time someone flagged that it was a problem, it went right over his head’.
Biden simply refused to say he was sorry and, as one adviser put it: ‘He won’t apologize because he thinks he did nothing wrong’.
Allen and Parnes write that Obama held off endorsing Biden because he ‘seemed to be enamored with a former Texas congressman, Beto O’Rourke’.
The book says: ‘For many Democrats, Biden simply seemed unsuited for a modern campaign. Obama’s allies sometimes explained the former president’s reluctance to bless Biden’s candidacy as fear that Biden would dishonor himself with a bad campaign’.
Obama’s fears about Biden ‘ran deep – deeper than defeat’.
‘Lucky’ says: ‘Obama worried that his former vice president would embarrass himself on the campaign trail and that the people around him would not be able to prevent a belly-flop.
‘He wanted reassurance that Biden’s legacy would be protected, that his staff would not let him become a tragicomic caricature of an aging politician having his last hurrah’.
During a discussion with prominent black businesses executives Obama failed to even mention Biden, a telling omission that spoke volumes.
One of them had to remind Obama to talk about his former Vice President after going through all the frontrunners.
Covid-19 changed everything and Trump’s biggest challenge showed he was not up to the job so Biden did not break one of the golden rules in politics: never get in the way of an imploding rival
Among the other revelations in the book is that Biden’s inner circle were alarmed by his lackluster showing in the Iowa caucus, where he came third
It was only around Super Tuesday during the Democrat primaries that Obama began to encourage Biden’s rivals like Pete Buttigieg to drop out.
Obama would go on to become Biden’s attack dog, mocking Trump with incendiary speeches during the Presidential election.
But the lack of enthusiasm still hurt and Biden knew that ‘Barack Obama had not believed in Joe Biden’, ‘Lucky’ says.
Obama didn’t even call Biden until November 7th, the day the TV networks finally called the election, another sign that the man he once called his ‘brother’ was far from it.
Among the other revelations in the book is that Biden’s inner circle were alarmed by his lackluster showing in the Iowa caucus, where he came third.
Friends saw a candidate who was ‘lethargic and uninspiring on the stump and sometimes at a loss for the right words’.
The low point came on February 4th last year when the campaign has just $1.5m in the bank and were not sure they could pay their staff.
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, one of Biden’s Presidential campaign managers who is now his deputy chief of staff, joined his team out of pity and headed up his Nevada operation.
She thought: ‘If he’s going to end his campaign, I can help him do that with dignity’.
Another member of the Nevada team said: ‘It was a s*** show’.
During the protests over the police killing of George Floyd Biden was criticized by his Hollywood backers for not saying he supported defunding the police.
Biden wrote an op-ed in USA Today embracing both police and protesters which ‘set off a firestorm’ among A-list actors and movie executives.
One Biden aide told him: ‘There’s all this backlash from everybody, from activists to Hollywood types.
‘Hollywood people are calling up and saying: ”Hey, my people in these circles are saying this ain’t good.”
‘Lucky’ reveals that Biden thought that Hillary Clinton was a ‘terrible candidate’ in 2016 because she ‘didn’t have a message.’
Biden event thought that Clinton might face a formal prosecution for her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.
The book was written by Jonathan Allen, a senior political analyst for NBC News, and Amie Parnes, a senior correspondent with The Hill
The book says: ‘As the (2016) Clinton-Sanders race heated up, Biden remarked to one ally that he couldn’t believe how bad Hillary’s trustworthiness numbers were—he could cite them from memory- and said that, while he hoped she would not get indicted, he wasn’t sure.
‘He added that the trust issue could be politically fatal for her’.
The book confirms that John Kerry, the former Democrat Presidential candidate, did consider a late entry to the 2020 field and balked because he would have to give up lucrative position as chairman of Bank of America.
‘Lucky’ says: ‘Kerry had spent weeks campaigning for Biden, and he had come to a damning conclusion: He was convinced that his old Senate pal didn’t have fire in his belly. Joe’s got a lot to work with, Kerry thought, but he doesn’t seem to personally want it
‘He (Biden) sounds like he’s trying to move the country backward; he needs to be the candidate of the future’.
Kerry put his misgivings behind him once Biden became President – and became his climate envoy.
Scandal-plagued New York governor Andrew Cuomo drew the ire of the Biden team for submitting a self-aggrandizing video for the Democrat National Convention – held virtually due to the pandemic – that only mentioned Biden at the last minute.
Such tactics were typical of Cuomo and Biden’s team had already been asking themselves: ‘How is Andrew Cuomo going to f*** us this time?’
One aide said: ‘They put his speech on our doorstep, lit it on fire, rang the doorbell, and then ran away’.