According to new Monmouth University polling, former vice president Joe Biden is the (very, very) early 2020 Democratic front-runner in the all-important first state of Iowa:
In a field of 24 announced and potential candidates, Biden holds the lead with 27% support among Democratic voters who are likely to attend the Iowa caucuses in February. He is followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (16%), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (9%), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (7%), California Sen. Kamala Harris (7%), former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke (6%), Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (4%), New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (3%), and former cabinet secretary Julián Castro (2%). Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang each receive 1% support from likely caucusgoers.
Monmouth also breaks down the demographic and ideological sources of the early support for “Crazy Uncle Joe“:
Biden does especially well among voters age 65 and older (44%), those earning less than $50,000 a year (38%), and those without a college degree (34%). On the ideological spectrum, Biden’s support comes more from self-described moderates and conservatives (35%) than from liberals (20%), but the same is true for Sanders although to a lesser degree (20% non-liberals, 13% liberals).
According to prediction market website PredictIt, Biden is currently second to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in overall 2020 presidential nomination odds.
The new Iowa polling comes amidst heightened backlash that Biden has faced, of late, for some of his “touchy” treatment of and interactions with women, going back decades. As The Daily Wire has reported, a barrage of women have come forward over the past month to accuse Biden of inappropriately touching them in prior decades. Biden, who has not yet formally tossed his hat into the 2020 presidential ring, even released a video statement addressing the accusations:
“For the coming month I expect to be talking about a whole lot of issues and I’ll always be direct with you, but today I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that I’ve made to women and some men that made them uncomfortable,” he said. “And I’m always trying to be, in my career, I’ve always tried to make a human connection; that’s my responsibility, I think. I shake hands; I hug people; I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, ‘You can do this.’ Whether they’re women, men, young, old, it’s the way I’ve always been; it’s the way I’ve tried to show I care about them and I’m listening. And over the years, knowing what I’ve been through, the things that I’ve faced, I’ve found that scores, if not hundreds of people come up to me, reached out for solace and comfort. Something, something, anything that can help them get through the tragedy that they’re going through, and so, it’s just who I am.”
In a Daily Wire op-ed last month, I predicted that Biden’s history with women would indeed come back to ruin his prospective 2020 candidacy.
Hold aside that Biden has not formally entered the fray yet — he probably will do so. But Biden simply has too much baggage, in the current environment. Who in their right mind thinks that coquettish creepy “Uncle Joe” is a good fit for the current #MeToo moment? Who in their right mind thinks that Biden’s formerly held views on race and crime won’t come back to destroy him in the minds of the increasingly dominant hard left faction of the Democratic base? Biden has simply been in the national spotlight for too long, and has too long a track record to cleanly avoid opposition research-driven scrutiny. And, amazingly, the man who once tag-teamed with Ted Kennedy to vilely savage Robert Bork’s judicial career is almost assuredly now too “moderate” for the batcrap crazy hard Left.