Voters don’t hate Joe Biden, 73, the genial vice president who openly agonized last year before deciding not to put himself and his family through the rigors of a presidential bid in the wake of the 2015 death of his son after a battle with brain cancer.
Not most voters, anyway. In a nationwide poll conducted in March for Bloomberg Politics, only 35 percent of respondents had a negative view of Biden compared with 68 percent who had a negative view of Trump, 53 percent who viewed Clinton unfavorably and 41 percent with a negative impression of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who also is vying for the Democratic nomination.
Biden’s favorability rating in that same poll was 57 percent compared with 29 percent for Trump, 44 percent for Clinton and 52 percent for Sanders.
If Clinton’s email-related problems get worse or other developments sink her popularity far below even Trump’s, causing her to step aside, Biden, as a more establishment figure than Sanders, would be the party’s likely choice as a “slip-in” candidate and an almost certain winner against Trump.
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