The ultimate "whoa, if true" story; if confirmed, it's what Big Joe himself might call a BFD. Via National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru who assures me that his source on the train is totally reliable. Josh Alcorn, incidentally, has close ties to the Bidens and signed on to join 'Draft Biden' last month:
Another [Amtrak] passenger said that Alcorn was being loud enough in the café car to make it hard to work. He said that Alcorn had said on one call, “I am 100 percent that Joe is in.” He was less certain of when Biden would announce, but guessed it would be in mid-October. Alcorn’s own plans to travel to California in early October would have to be canceled if Biden announced earlier. The other passenger said that Alcorn said that test ads were doing well in converting Hillary Clinton supporters to Biden supporters, and that money had been lined up to come in right before the announcement.
Supposedly Joe's gettin' in, big money is coalescing around his impending presidential bid, and anti-Hillary test messaging is hitting its mark. This could all be misdirection, of course; it sort of seems as if this guy wanted the contents of his "private" conversation to be overheard and to leak. And Ponnuru reports that Draft Biden officials did dispute certain details of the story, stating that no test ads have been created. But they didn't deny the bottom line. Hmm. Time will tell, obviously, but this report should't come as a shocker either way. The Vice President has been flirting with entering the 2016 fray for many weeks, and was reportedly urged by his dying son to do so. At the moment, he scores much higher than Hillary Clinton in favorability, honesty and empathy polling, and performs better head-to-head with Republicans. And national Democrats appear to be getting increasingly jittery about the direction of her campaign -- which is increasingly identified with scandal and aloofness:
Democrats are troubled by the slow responses Team Clinton has given to major and minor controversies that have dogged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign...Last week, Democratic strategists, lawmakers and their aides breathed a sigh of relief when Clinton apologized for using the personal server to handle work-related matters. But some Clinton allies say it may have been too little, too late. They argue that while Clinton waited to confront the problem head-on, her allies were left fumbling to try to explain away the problem. “It was just sitting there, like the elephant in the room, for all of us to answer,” one senior aide on Capitol Hill said. “And this wasn’t just happening for days. It took all summer.” … “With the Clintons, the media is always wrong and they can never get anything right, so when there’s a story about them, they’re not going to believe it even when it’s true,” said one longtime Clinton ally. “The whole world could be jumping up, saying, ‘You’re wrong,’ but they’re reaction is always, ‘What? Nothing’s wrong.’” The longtime Clinton ally chocked it up to arrogance and insularity coupled with campaign aides unwilling to speak up to their boss.
Insularity and arrogance. How appealing. But is this the man to whom Democrats really want to turn as an alternative to Mrs. Clinton? Suffice it to say, the rationale for a Biden run is becoming increasingly clear. Meanwhile, Team Sanders is firing back at Team Hillary, while Martin O'Malley continues to smack the DNC for its perceived Clinton favoritism: