Former Vice President Joe Biden staggered into the Iowa Caucuses a shaky frontrunner.
Biden led almost continually in the national polls since entering the race and many Democrats believed Biden was the strongest candidate to take on Donald Trump.
But Joe Biden was humiliated by a jaw-dropping defeat. Now Biden faces this big decision.
In the run up to the Iowa Caucuses, polls showed former Vice President Biden slightly behind Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Biden’s entire argument centered on his supposed “electability.”
But an “electability” argument represents a double-edged sword.
Biden clung to this perch as the frontrunner because Democrat voters – while they didn’t love Biden – judged his message of “electability” as addressing their number one issue which was beating Donald Trump.
However, selling yourself as the “electable” candidate carries a serious downside.
Any loss – no matter the margin – means you lose the aura of invincibility.
And suddenly other candidates look like “winners” that are surer bets in the General Election.
Many pundits believed that is what happened to Joe Biden out in Iowa.
After the fiasco on caucus night where the state party could not report results, the vote tally eventually went public the following day.
Those results were a disaster for Biden.
The Iowa Democrat Party made the vote total from 62 percent of the vote public.
And the vote showed former Vice President Joe Biden is a distant fourth place.
Biden’s showing was so dismal that Biden was closer to fifth place finisher Amy Klobuchar than Biden was to the current leader, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Pundits were not kind on Biden’s performance.
The Blaze TV host Steve Deace – who made his name as an expert in Iowa politics – pronounced Biden’s candidacy on life support after this pathetic showing.
“What the #IowaCaucuses did show last night is Joe Biden is a mortally wounded candidate. A polling house of cards. He’s Jeb Bush 2020. He will not be the nominee,” Deace wrote.
The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney analyzed Biden’s performance in equally harsh terms.
Carney wrote the morning after the caucus:
But definitely, Biden bombed. He was first or second in all the polls, he is the former vice president, he has near universal name ID — and yet he finished fourth.
Biden’s campaign can claim the whole process is tainted by the reporting problem, but the press shouldn’t let him obscure what we know: He failed in Iowa, again.
On his first time out campaigning without Barack Obama, Biden failed miserably. That much we know.
Former Vice President Biden entered January with just nine million dollars cash on hand rendering his campaign essentially broke as it heads toward New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina before reaching Super Tuesday.
Biden needed a big showing in Iowa to convince donors his candidacy was still viable.
And Biden may have belly flopped on that front.
Great American Daily will keep you up to date on any new developments in the 2020 Presidential election.
