Following Hillary Clinton endorsement, where's Bill?
April 30, 2020 02:48 PM
Former Vice President Joe Biden has earned the endorsement of his former boss and the last two-term Democratic president, Barack Obama, along with the party's failed 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton.
One Democratic luminary, however, is conspicuously absent from Biden's endorsement list: former President Bill Clinton.
While endorsement by Hillary Clinton's husband, president from 1993-2001, is still possible, Bill Clinton's relative silence today reflects changing circumstances in the Democratic coalition. Acquitted by the Senate in his 1999 impeachment trial over perjury and obstruction of justice charges in the Monica Lewinsky affair, Bill Clinton years later has become a pariah figure in some Democratic quarters. And comparisons with Biden's sexual assault allegations, by former Senate staff member Tara Reade, make a public appearance by the former president particularly uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, senator, and first lady defeated by President Trump in 2016, recently offered effusive praise for Biden, who was vice president for eight years after 36 years as a Delaware senator.
“I’ve not only been a colleague of Joe Biden's, I’ve been a friend, and I can tell you that I wish he were president right now, but I can’t wait until he is if all of us do our part," she said Tuesday in a livestream with Biden.
Earlier this month, Obama announced his support for Biden as well, shortly after Sen. Bernie Sanders said he was ending his campaign. Questions about Obama's endorsement lingered throughout the entire primary, but following Biden's South Carolina win, he worked behind the scenes to consolidate former 2020 Democratic rivals such as Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to back Biden.
Bill Clinton has largely avoided having to make difficult choices in the last few presidential cycles, backing his wife in 2016 and in 2008. In 2012, he gave the headliner speech at the Democratic National Convention, officially nominating Obama for reelection.
In 2004, the Democratic nomination wrapped up relatively early, with John Kerry winning 52 contests. Although recovering from heart surgery, Clinton lent his support to Kerry in press releases and interviews.
Jimmy Carter, the oldest surviving Democratic president, has stopped short of endorsing any candidate but has given veiled criticisms of Biden's campaign. In September 2019, he said he would have been "too old" to be president at 80 — the age Biden would be in his first term.
In 2017, Carter revealed that he voted for Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary. But Carter's 1977-1981 presidency is part of a distant past for many voters, while Bill Clinton, for many, represented a "third way" brand of center-left politics that was supposed to endure in popularity for decades.
"Carter is an unpopular and failed president, do you want to be associated with him? I think there’s some of that with Clinton, you have the issue with his impeachment, but he leads his office very popular," said presidential historian Barbara Perry, who has done extensive work on presidential endorsements. "He’s popular, but in recent times because of the #MeToo movement, there are those issues."
Perry, a scholar at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, said Bill Clinton's drawbacks as a surrogate had lingered since 2000, when his vice president, Al Gore, sought as the Democratic nominee to distance himself from the president in the wake of impeachment.
Although the mark of impeachment on his legacy still remains, much of Clinton's absence is likely due to the massive culture changes surrounding allegations of sexual assault, including the most recent one lobbied against Biden by Reade.
None of that is to say Clinton won't ever return to the campaign trail, particularly since he and Biden occupy similar wings of the party ideologically. And the pair have a long history. During Clinton's first two years as president, Biden, as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, shepherded through the confirmation of two Supreme Court nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer. And Biden fought for passage of the Clinton administration's crime bill, which ultimately became law.
Bill Clinton's backing could still help Biden, said Democratic strategist Scott Ferson.
"There’s no one with better political timing. Hillary didn’t get much play" in her announcement video for Biden, Ferson told the Washington Examiner. "As a former president, I think there’s a time for him to critique Trump, but after we get through this [health crisis]."
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/following-hillary-clinton-endorsement-wheres-bill