JOE BIDEN/POLITICAL FIGURES/POLITICS: “Joe Biden knows that winning in 2020 would require a shoot-the-moon set of circumstances and luck. So his team is on the hunt for a moon shot.
Between stops on his book tour and in the ramp-up for what will be a heavy midterms campaign schedule, a tight circle of aides has been brainstorming a range of tear-up-the-playbook ideas for a White House run, according to people who’ve been part of the discussions or told about them.
On the list: announcing his candidacy either really early or really late in the primary process so that he’d define the field around him or let it define itself before scrambling the field; skipping Iowa and New Hampshire and going straight to South Carolina, where he has always had a strong base of support; announcing a running mate right out of the gate and possibly picking one from outside of politics; and making a pitch that he can be a bridge not just to disaffected Democrats, but to Republicans revolting against President Donald Trump…
Biden loves to talk, and he loves when people talk to him about running for president. But he’s been urging people to focus on 2018, given the stakes for Democrats, insisting that it hurts the cause if at every stop he’s seen as campaigning for the sake of laying the groundwork for his own future.”
-Edward-Isaac Dovere, “Team Biden mulls far-out options to take on Trump in 2020,” Politico, Mar. 9, 2018 05:01am