Inside the Big Money Hunt for an Alternate Biden. The Ukraine scandal has only amplified fears that the 76-year-old Biden might not have what it takes to go the distance in the general election. But with Bennet polling at 0% in Iowa, and Warren considered too progressive, who might take up his centrist lane?
few days after the third Democratic debate, a movie producer of some renown was in his car, at a quarter past 7 p.m., on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. There was a lot of traffic, and he was late for a dinner party off the Sepulveda Pass. We started talking about the Democratic primary, and when I asked him whether Joe Biden had the stamina to win the nomination and, ultimately, the White House, he laughed uproariously. “Fuck no,” he said. “Only septuagenarians in the Palisades think that. Everyone else knows he’s the Titanic.” When I asked whether he’d go on the record, he laughed louder. “Of course not. I have the utmost respect for the former vice president.”
The producer’s sentiment is a tidy encapsulation of how many in the Democratic donor class are thinking about Biden these days, in Hollywood and beyond. The former vice president raised just $15.2 million last quarter, fully $6 million less than he raised in the previous quarter. The subtext is clear: Donors are fond of Biden, in a dutiful sort of way, but they’re increasingly worried that he might get clobbered in the general.
Fears of a Biden meltdown, coupled with a brutal GOP war of disinformation, have spawned a search, increasingly frantic, for an Alternate Biden—someone who can win a large majority of moderate Democrats and progressives and reclaim Obama–Trump voters in the Upper Midwest. “Joe Biden can do this tomorrow with his eyes closed, but there is real fear, real concern,” said Ken Solomon, president of the Tennis Channel and one of Barack Obama’s Southern California fundraising-committee cochairmen in 2012. Barry Porter, a managing general partner of Clarity Partners, a private-equity shop headquartered in Beverly Hills, said, “Who is the alternative, should Joe Biden fade? There is concern that, if he fades, who’s next? The Ukrainian thing is only throwing accelerant on that concern.”
There are no Alternate Biden front-runners. Instead, there’s a constellation of moderate- to moderate-ish maybe-presidents, all men, waiting for Biden to implode. They include nonentities like Montana Governor Steve Bullock, outsiders like tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and noncandidates like former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Perhaps the highest-polling Biden alternative is South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is very much in the race and actually has a path to the nomination, albeit an unlikely one.
Then there’s Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a perennial favorite among a certain generation of Democrats, who is now polling at 0% in Iowa. Bennet was scheduled, on September 26, to attend a fundraiser at Porter’s Brentwood home. Cohosts included Solomon; Jeff Shell, chairman of NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment; producer Matt Tolmach and his wife, director Paige Goldberg Tolmach; City National Bank chairman Russell Goldsmith; and entertainment lawyer and screenwriter Carol Fuchs.
At the last minute, Bennet, a Senate Intelligence Committee member, had to postpone his California trip so he could be at a briefing on the Ukraine scandal. That night, he caught a late flight to L.A., and the next morning, he met with three separate groups of supporters—at Porter’s office, the Brentwood home of writer and producer Alan Grossbard, and an office in Century City. Of the 75 who had been expected at Porter’s the night before, 40 came to hear Bennet talk about his very uphill battle to win the nomination—not so shabby given that all these people are scheduled to death.
“I think Michael Bennet may be Abraham Lincoln,” Solomon said. “He’s not so flashy, but he’s actually the right guy. He may be the one, because we are so fractionalized.” Porter added that Bennet has “a groundswell of support among people who are either influential in the party or the business world, or are simply sitting on the sidelines for now.”
The strategy of all the candidates who have yet to get much traction appears to be the same: place in the top three in the February 3 Iowa caucus and generate a ton of buzz, money, and momentum.
A prominent Democratic bundler scoffed at the Alternate Biden camp. “We found an alternative to Biden,” the bundler said. “Her name is Elizabeth Warren, and it’s the elites in the party, in L.A. and New York, who don’t like her, people who think the wealth tax is going to be unpopular. Guess what? It’s not.”
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