Joe Biden has a few (actually many) things on his mind – By Mark Z. Barabak (LA Times) / Feb 8 2020
MANCHESTER, N.H. — For 20 minutes it was Joe Biden, live and unplugged.
Standing with a hand-held microphone, before a dozen TV cameras and scores of reporters, the former vice president held forth Saturday. Not as someone whose decades-long political career was on the line, which it may well be in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
More like a man set free, his tongue loosened and liberated — although, it should be said, for much of this campaign it has been Biden who chose to avoid the kind of free-ranging, all-access press policy that transformed Pete Buttigieg from a pinpoint to a serious contender for the Democratic nomination.
The former vice president was cloistered — seen by reporters but not available for questions — until his dire political situation left him no choice but to shed his front-runner’s presumption and show a bit of stagy swagger. Finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses will do that to a candidate whose White House bid is heavily premised on supposed electability.
For the loquacious Biden, standing in a campaign field office in a former American Legion Hall, it was like a dam burst open. Or a shaken soda bottle, uncorked.
He talked. And talked and talked some more: about his rivals and their extravagant promises — “C’mon, man” — about the absurdity of those crowded debates, where seemingly everyone and their brother has been allowed on stage.
“You call those debates?” he demanded. “I’ve been in debates.”
Continue to article: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-08/
