‘Morning Joe’: Andrew Cuomo Is Like ‘The Shadow President’ But Biden ‘Is in a Terrible Position’
Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist discussed former Vice President Joe Biden’s attempts to continue campaigning with national affairs John Heilemann on Friday. Biden has tried to keep in touch with people through videos and a new podcast, but appears to be struggling to make traction.
“Joe Biden has been doing his best to run a presidential campaign unlike, obviously, any that has been run, from his living room,” Geist said.
“He’s doing a ton of press. He’s sort of trying to run a parallel presidency, speaking as if he were the president, how he would be addressing this crisis.”
Geist asked Heilemann how the Biden campaign was coping with limited campaigning of this nature.
“Frustration levels are super high there, Willie,” Heilemann said. “The reality is that the Vice President, former Vice President, is in a terrible position. In the sense that he doesn’t have a platform. He doesn’t have real standing in this crisis.”
“So you look at, obviously, Donald Trump, who has the ability to dominate, for good or bad, has the ability to dominate coverage. He’s in the middle of the entire thing and will have this big platform and megaphone, bigger than ever. You also have governors, office holders, who are dealing with this on the front lines.”
“Someone like Andrew Cuomo, who has a daily television show now, and has become, in some ways, the shadow president in some respects,” he said.
“For a lot of people, Andrew Cuomo has become the leader of the Democratic Party in this crisis because he is on the front lines in the most severely impacted state, and has been doing a tremendous job, most people would agree.”
“What Joe Biden doesn’t have is any real traction in this,” he went on. “I think everyone recognizes that he has to continue to have a voice and try to find ways to be part of the conversation. But those ways are not available to him in any natural way. He has no natural standing to be in the conversation.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
