Joe Biden officially announced that he’s running for president and the responses have been from soup to nuts all week.
The Democratic Party is on record saying it has no plans to host any primary debates for Biden, much to the ire of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, the two other announced Democrats. Insiders are understandably concerned Biden can’t hold his own in a debate at this point.
Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola immediately endorsed Biden, saying she appreciates his support for the ConocoPhillips Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the fact that he listens to Alaskans.
That might not be how some Alaskans see it. Biden, in allowing the Willow project to move forward, also locked up 16 million acres of the NPR-A, saying he would not allow any other projects in the region that was set aside for oil. He’s also shut down timber and mining in the state. He canceled leases in Cook Inlet.
An early endorsement of Biden may be strategic, with Peltola’s team hoping it will be forgotten by voters later. But polls show most Democrat voters across the country do not want the 80-year-old president to run. They’d support him reluctantly if he becomes the party’s nominee. According to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, just 42% of voters approve of the job President Biden is doing compared with 56% who disapprove.
Others endorsing Biden include a long list of elected and appointed Democrats, such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, former President Barack Obama, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Sec. of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has announced his endorsement. So far, the Boston Globe is the only major newspaper to publish its endorsement.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who is running for president, says Biden’s candidacy is a case of elder abuse.
“He’s not *really* running – it’s just the managerial class using Joe Biden as a front to advance its own agenda. To them Biden’s cognitive impairment isn’t a bug. It’s a feature,” Ramaswamy said in an email to potential supporters.
“The administrative state more effectively controls its puppets when they are hollowed-out husks of themselves. The fact that it’s elder abuse is just a cost of doing business for Biden’s handlers. It’s revealing that the DNC refuses to host primary debates this year; they’re spitting in the face of their grassroots base,” he wrote.
Alaskans voted for Donald Trump over Biden in 2020, with 53% for Trump to Biden’s 43%, but Biden narrowly won Anchorage that year, the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Trump was the first president of either party to win statewide in Alaska without winning the majority in Alaska’s largest city, which has drifted to the Left over the past four yeas.
