Things are not looking well for former Vice President Joe Biden in his 2020 presidential campaign.
“I’m a Biden supporter and I’m praying — really praying to God — he’ll do OK in the [New Hampshire presidential] primary Tuesday,” Gary Behrens, an American Airlines and Amtrak retiree and now a passenger assistant at Manchester Airport, told me.
But in the next breath, Behrens admitted: “It doesn’t look good. Most of the people I met say Bernie [Sanders] is ahead.”
Behrens, a Manchester resident, seemed to be speaking for most of the enthusiasts in the Granite State. With less than 24 hours before polls open for the primary, a just-completed CNN poll showed among likely voters, Sanders leads former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 28 percent to 21 percent.
Biden trails with 12 percent in the same poll, followed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 9 percent and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar 6 percent.
At the Econo-Lodge in Manchester, the polls’ findings were echoed by two Biden campaign workers from New Jersey who had come to the state to canvass for their man.
One of them told me, “I’ve seen our private polls and they aren’t encouraging. This is going to be hard.”
Both said they would have no problem supporting Buttigieg if he were the Democrats' nominee. One said “Sanders is the only [Democrat] I would have a problem with. He’s as dogmatic as Trump.”
On the heels of his fourth-place finish in the Iowa, a third- or fourth-place finish could be fatal for the Biden campaign in New Hampshire. He clearly has to win second to go on to the Nevada caucuses and his so-called "firewall" in the South Carolina primary Feb. 29.
Biden very likely is aware he has to demonstrate he's the centrist alternative to Sanders and he recently launched a sharp media salvo against Buttigieg.
In contrasting Buttigieg’s record on installing lights and infrastructure in South Bend, with the former vice president’s own record on the national and international stage, the Biden spot concludes that the former mayor “fired South Bend’s first African-American police chief . . . and its first African-American fire chief.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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