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I would say definitely not today. In my view, tomorrow would be better.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2010, at 10:58 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> Sen k and I just talked and think this speaks clearly to moving with
> email in am. Intend to call nj later this am.
>
> Question, does this speak to waiting until wed, as nj has requested,
> so as not to appear to be reaction to this column? Don't think so
> but.... Or even send it this afternoon, or also too much of a
> reaction? My gut is tomorrow am.
> From: Alexander Snyder-Mackler <[email protected]>
> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:52:38 -0500
> To: BB<[email protected]>; Hunter Biden<[email protected]>;
> ted kaufman<[email protected]>; Acdonilon<[email protected]>
> Subject: Themal: JRB says BB doesn't want to run
>
> This is in this morning's opinion section with a headline across the
> top, "VP: Beau Doesn't Want to Run"
>
> Mike -- do you know who was with him for this interview? Was this
> off the record? It's Themal, so you never know. Nothing we can do at
> this point, anyway.
>
> Our conversation ended with a surprising request from the vice
> president as he hurried off to a national security meeting.
> Spontaneously, he turned to the possible Delaware senatorial
> campaign of his son Beau.
>
> Biden: "If you run into Beau, talk him into running; he respects you."
>
> Me: "I don't think he wants to run, though."
>
> Biden: "I don't think he does either. I know he doesn't want to. ...
> I'm so proud of the job he's done [as attorney general]."
>
> Me: "Would you campaign for him [against Republican Mike Castle]?"
>
> Biden: "Hell, yes. I told him I'd give him my sixth-born grandchild."
>
> I doubt Beau Biden "respects" me, but it was quite startling to hear
> the vice president confirm what many Democrats fear -- that Beau
> does not want to be the candidate.
>
>
>
>
> January 24, 2010
>
> VP Biden: Beau doesn't want to run
>
> By HARRY F. THEMAL
> The News Journal
>
> In January 2009, when Joe Biden said goodbye to the Senate where he
> had served for 36 years, he told his colleagues, "I will always be a
> Senate man. Except for the title of 'father,' there is no title,
> including 'vice president,' that I am more proud to wear than that
> of United States senator."
>
> Now, one year later, he is dismayed by what has happened to the
> Senate, and he is trying to convince a reluctant son to run for his
> former seat.
>
> In a wide-ranging interview last week about his first year as vice
> president, Biden said a "lamentable atmosphere" exists in the
> Senate, a view he says is shared by some of his long-time Republican
> friends. Sixty votes are needed to pass almost anything to forestall
> a filibuster, because the Republicans are unanimously saying no. How
> did a deliberative constitutional body lose the basic principle that
> a majority -- in the Senate's case, 51 votes -- doesn't count?
>
> "I have never seen one party [standing] the rules on their head like
> this," Biden says. "I can't think of a time when every single vote,
> from an NLRB nomination to health care, required 60 votes. No
> democracy can long be sustained where you can only rule by
> supermajority."
>
> So Biden has constitutional scholars researching whether and how
> such a stalemate can be broken. As vice president, he presides over
> the Senate he so loves and where he can cast the tie-breaking vote.
> "I never thought we would get a genuine bipartisanship on health
> reform, but I also didn't think people would vote against funding
> our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by directly voting against the
> defense appropriation bill."
>
> Calling that Senate stalemate the greatest disappointment of his
> first 12 months as the nation's second-highest elected official,
> Biden said his two greatest surprises have been "institutional
> constraints" and how he has become an "impact player." The
> constraints he most chafes against are the security arrangements
> required by his office, when "I got to have 28 Secret Service agents
> when I take off," and when he cannot easily invite or circulate with
> the Delawareans who have long been his friends.
>
> He is pleased with "how quickly I have been able to be an impact
> player in the implementation of ideas and initiatives."
>
> We spoke after he had just had his weekly one-on-one meeting with
> President Obama in a small dining room off the Oval Office. Over his
> tomato soup and a cheeseburger, they discussed personal matters but
> concentrated on foreign concerns and domestic issues that each
> wanted to bring up. It's obvious Obama and he have created an
> excellent working relationship.
>
> Biden has been the country's point man on Iraq, speaking frequently
> to its leaders on the phone and inviting all parties to his
> Washington office, and visiting the country now for the fourth time.
> He is concerned that 500 candidates have been disqualified for the
> coming election. As a New York Times Magazine profile headlined in
> November, Biden "could be the second-most-powerful vice president in
> history" as a "foreign policy sage, sounding board, senatorial arm-
> twister, troubleshooter."
>
> According to his office, Biden is projected to be the most-traveled
> vice president ever, already having visited 14 countries and having
> met more than 120 foreign officials in their countries and in
> Washington. The office also compiled some other achievements for
> that first year: He oversaw the White House Middle Class Task Force
> and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; raised funds for 33
> candidates from 19 states; "was instrumental in Sen. Arlen Specter's
> switch to the Democratic Party"; hosted more than 5,000 people (with
> wife Jill) at their official home at the Naval Observatory and has
> made "fighting for veterans and military families a major priority."
>
> Biden's analysis of the Democrats' loss in Massachusetts was similar
> to others'. The key problem for the Democrats may have been that the
> Republicans campaigned against the health care bill in the only
> state that already covers almost all of its citizens. He felt that
> Democrat Martha Coakley "paid virtually no attention to the race,
> always a disaster. ... I don't think the Republicans would have been
> ahead had she hit the ground running." He also called the GOP
> winner, Scott Brown, an "attractive personality, who came across as
> confident, was a good campaigner."
>
> He didn't mention it, but Biden himself was a virtual unknown
> quantity when he won his first term against the popular J. Caleb
> Boggs in 1972 in perhaps as much of an upset.
>
> It certainly seems as if the president's coattails are very short
> these days, since not only did Coakley lose in a strongly Democratic
> state but Republican governors were recently elected in New Jersey
> and Virginia. Obama campaigned for Democrats in all three states.
> Biden does not draw a doomsday conclusion from that for the November
> elections.
>
> "Initially you'll see great consternation, wringing of hands, 'Does
> this mean our administration is dead?' " Biden said. He points out
> that after the 2008 election when the Republicans got clobbered,
> "people said the Republican Party is dead and buried and gone
> forever," but it's bounced back.
>
> "As far as the Democrats may be down in the polls, the Republicans
> are down further," he pointed out. Even though both congressional
> parties are in the 20s or 30s percentage-wise, both the president
> and the vice president continue to rate in the 50s and 60s. To win
> in November, "we have to focus on what's on people's immediate
> plate. If by November the president is able to stand up and say, 'I
> kept my commitment,' and all combat troops are out of Iraq, and we
> again have the beginnings of a functioning democracy there, we have
> the support of the international community to deal with Iran, we
> have halted the job loss and have created more than a million jobs,"
> chances are good for the Democrats.
>
> "That's in contrast with the Republicans, who have offered virtually
> nothing."
>
> Biden cited Obama's forceful aid to Haiti as showing the level of
> competency Delawareans always approved.
>
> In contrast, he thinks President George W. Bush's handling of the
> devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and the Gulf
> Coast was probably the "most single damaging thing that happened to
> George Bush."
>
> Our conversation ended with a surprising request from the vice
> president as he hurried off to a national security meeting.
> Spontaneously, he turned to the possible Delaware senatorial
> campaign of his son Beau.
>
> Biden: "If you run into Beau, talk him into running; he respects you."
>
> Me: "I don't think he wants to run, though."
>
> Biden: "I don't think he does either. I know he doesn't want to. ...
> I'm so proud of the job he's done [as attorney general]."
>
> Me: "Would you campaign for him [against Republican Mike Castle]?"
>
> Biden: "Hell, yes. I told him I'd give him my sixth-born grandchild."
>
> I doubt Beau Biden "respects" me, but it was quite startling to hear
> the vice president confirm what many Democrats fear -- that Beau
> does not want to be the candidate.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Alexander Snyder-Mackler
> (302) 598-867