Yet to announce, Joe Biden tops Democrat polls

Former US Vice-President Joe Biden hasn't said - yet - that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination, but he leads all announced candidates in the polls. He also leads in age and gaffes.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls places Biden atop the field with support from 29.3 percent of prospective voters in the Democratic primaries, followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at 19.8 percent and California Senator Kamala Harris at 11.8 percent.

But this early in the primary season the polls may reflect little more than name recognition. Biden, 76, was elected to the Senate from Delaware in 1972 and served two terms as former President Barack Obama's vice-president.

"I think 100 percent there's a market for Joe Biden," Jonathan Zogby, CEO of Zogby Analytics in Utica, New York, told China Daily. "The party craves a moderate. Everyone, especially the new faces, are moving far left. Biden brings experience to the table. He's got high name recognition and he can bridge the gap between the party's moderates and progressives."

Zogby said Biden has a solid record as a centrist and the former vice president has the best shot at winning back blue-collar voters who voted in large numbers for Trump in 2016.

"It will be a nasty primary," Zogby said. "The Democrats will all go at each other. Every prior statement and vote will be on the table. If Biden wins his party's nomination, it will be a bare-knuckle heavyweight fight with Trump in the fall. Biden might be the Democratic Party's best chance to beat Trump and take back the Senate. We've been polling early matchups and Biden now beats Trump, but anything can hap-pen between now and election day."

If elected president in 2020, Biden would be 78 years old when he takes the oath of office in January 2021. President Donald Trump is 72.

There have been news reports since January that Biden was close to making a decision and would soon announce his intention. The New York Times reported on March 7 that his advisers are eyeing a launch date early next month and that Biden's wife, Jill, is on board.

Biden is often called "Uncle Joe" in the press because of his folksy manner, and some see that jovial demeanor, his White House experience and his ability to relate to blue-collar Americans as among his best assets.

Prone to gaffes

But then there are Biden's often cited drawbacks - especially his tendency to say stupid things.

Speaking of Obama after being named his running mate, Biden said: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Forgetting that the stock market crashed in 1929 years before commercial television, Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

Some political analysts also say that his candidacy would likely spark criticism for the way he handled Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. He has been criticized for failing to blunt Republican attacks on Hill's credibility and for not calling witnesses to support her.

Biden quit the 1988 presidential race after the press revealed that he had plagiarized portions of his campaign speech from Neil Kinnock, then leader of the British Labour Party.

Biden has had a difficult personal life. His son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46. In 1972, Biden's first wife, Neilia, and young daughter, Naomi, were killed in an auto accident.

Early polling suggests registered Democrats want someone new to challenge Trump. That stated preference has led to a cascade of candidates who in polls have shown little chance of winning the nomination, including New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (0.8 percent in the polls); former housing secretary Julian Castro (0.8 percent), and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (1 percent).

Bloomberg bows out

Other announced candidates for the Democratic nomination include Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (7 percent), New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (5.5 percent), Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar (3.3 percent) and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (1 percent).

Last week, three potential candidates dropped out of the running.

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced that he won't run, saying "I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field." Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown bowed out of entering the race, saying he felt he could do a better job by remaining in the Senate.

Hillary Clinton, the losing Democratic candidate in 2016 and former US secretary of state, said on Monday she won't run in next year's primaries.

Does that mean she wouldn't become a candidate if the convention deadlocks? Delegates selected in the primaries are bound to a candidate for only the first ballot at the convention. Pollster Nate Silver said there's a "high probability" of a brokered convention because the crowded field will make it difficult for a candidate to win enough votes in the primaries to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1952, when Adlai Stevenson secured the Democratic nomination on the third ballot. Dwight Eisenhower, leader of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, defeated Stevenson in the general election and won a second term in 1956.

Little known candidates include Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana; John Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland; Jay Inslee, governor of Washington state; Marianne Williamson, author and lecturer; and Andrew Yang, a New York entrepreneur.

Howard Schultz, former Starbucks chief executive officer, is running as an independent candidate.

Beto O'Rourke (5.3 percent) hasn't announced his candidacy but is expected to run. The Texas Democrat served three terms in the House of Representatives and lost to Senator Ted Cruz last November in a race for the Senate.

Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said winning the state's caucuses, set for February 3, 2020, requires a candidate to master retail politics: meeting as many voters as possible in the state's 1,679 precincts, building relationships and turning out supporters.

"Biden is no stranger to Iowa and Iowa is no stranger to Biden," he said. "He has a lot of friends here from his prior runs as well as his time as vice president. Biden has a good base of supporters and he's got the ability to build on that should he choose to run."