Halperin: ‘Biden Is Ready To Be President and He Feels He’d Be a Better Pres. than Hillary’
LAUER: “Let’s bring in Mark Halperin, managing editor of Bloomberg politics. Mark, always good to see you. Good morning.”
HALPERIN: “Good morning, Matt.”
LAUER: “The tea leaf readers are out in full force this morning dissecting every word that Joe Biden said last night. But he came right on, he said he's not sure he's there yet, that he can make the full commitment to running. Do you think he's bluffing?”
HALPERIN: “No, I think he's more inclined than before. That’s the sense I get. Look, three things were on display --“ [Crosstalk]
LAUER: “More inclined to what?”
HALPERIN: “To run [indecipherable]. Three things were on display. First of all, the incredible life of Joe Biden. Second is, this is the most wide open presidential race any of us have ever seen. There is a moment bear for Joe Biden, he can see the possibility of being president. And finally, the personal moment for him right now. Does his son's death make him more want to run to fulfill the legacy, the dream that both Bidens had of one of them being president or is it just too much?” [Crosstalk]
LAUER: “He saw this differently than we saw it.”
GUTHRIE: “Yeah. I think – I think that you could read it any way you wanted to read it. I mean, you just said something remarkable, you said this is a wide open race, including on the Democratic side, something no one would have said six months ago. This speaks to Hillary Clinton’s sagging poll numbers. Not just Joe Biden but others potentially looking at this and thinking I could get into this race.”
HALPERIN: “Look what he did yesterday here in New York. Major League performance. Not just on Colbert and that incredible, touching thing, but talking about woman, violence against women, talking about minimum wage. Joe Biden is ready to be president. And he feels he’d be a better president than Hillary Clinton.”
LAUER: “Can he get the organization together, can he raise the kind of money it will take to win the nomination and an election.”
HALPERIN: “For his decision, that’s not what it’s about, it's all about the personal. Can he devote, as he said, the attention to it? He can win this on the debate stage, I believe. He’s great debater. He doesn't need her organization or her fund raising. He’ll never get it. If she's threatened by Bernie Sanders, if she's threatened by the public thinking, Democrats worried she's not the right person. He can win.”
