Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Bold TV that he thinks former vice president Joe Biden is the most formidable Democratic challenger.
“Joe Biden, I think, brings to the table--and it’s already evident--the kind of pressure on Trump that the others don’t quite honestly,” Steele said. “Even in terms of how Trump has gone after Biden in the last 24 hours you can tell that there’s a different edge to it. He knows that Trump has the ability to pull those white voters who moved towards him after Obama in the 2016 election back towards Biden.”
“There is a core well of folks in the Democratic primary process who see the the upside of having Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, that’s why he’s led pretty much every poll,” Steele said. “Yes, a lot of that’s name ID, but it’s also name ID with baggage so there’s stuff that they know about Joe that they may not necessarily like or have been concerned about. They’re willing to look past that to say ‘Who is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump?”
Biden’s 2020 campaign launch video centered around the Charlottesville, Va. riots in August 2017, where the president commented that he believed there were “very fine people on both sides” of protests initially about keeping a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in place. The riots resulted in the death of a young woman.
Steele said he does not think President Trump will have much competition in a Republican primary.
“There is something about the power of incumbency, and I think Bill Weld has to overcome that,” Steele said. “Right now Donald Trump enjoys 90 percent support among based Republicans, and that probably among the primary voters would be closer to 100 percent, meaning every primary voter.”
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