Yahoo Finance New book claims Obama saw Biden’s White House run as ‘ageing politician having his last hurrah’
A new book has claimed that Joe Biden did not have the support of former president Barack Obama and won the November elections because coronavirus let him stay hidden.
The book entitled “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency’’ says President Joe Biden’s camp got a chance to hide his weaknesses due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It also says that Mr Obama refused to support his former vice-president initially, as he feared his November run up could become “tragicomic caricature of an ageing politician having his last hurrah.’’
The book — written by senior political analyst for NBC News Jonathan Allen and senior correspondent with The Hill Amie Parnes — explores a critical observation of how Mr Biden won over Donald Trump in the 2020 elections with a “bland message and blank agenda.”
“Everything else, he’d (Mr 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,” the book says.
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Initial polls suggested the incumbent president was in a strong position in front of Mr Biden, who had two unsuccessful president runs behind him.
“Until the COVID thing came, we were winning four hundred electoral votes,’’ a source familiar with Mr Trump’s internal numbers around February 2020 claimed to the authors.
Authors say Mr Biden’s “stars aligned” this time, as the coronavirus pandemic exposed the mismanagement by Mr Trump, and Mr Biden had to do nothing more than looking better than the former president.
A top Biden adviser quoted in the book, Anita Dunn, said that “Covid was the best thing that happened to him” because it covered up his failures.
Another aide, quoted by the authors, explained the campaign strategy as: “You put your dumb uncle in the basement,” referring to the Democrat candidate whose initial videos were shot from his basement in Wilmington.
“Biden was able to hide his biggest weakness, which is himself. And he did it with an excuse that sounded responsible.”
Mr Biden, the oldest president in the history of the USA, was a safe choice when compared to Mr Trump, according to the authors, as the Democrats “weren’t willing to take a chance” on anyone who could ruin the chances of getting Mr Trump out of office.
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