Quinnipiac: Joe Biden compares favorably to Hillary Clinton in swing states.

SOON.

Vice President Biden matches up as well or better than Hillary Clinton against top 2016 Republicans in three swing states, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday morning that’s certain to fuel speculation of the former six-term senator entering the White House race.

Former Secretary of State Clinton is still the front-runner for Democratic primary voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and real estate mogul Donald Trump leads among the GOP, the survey says, but they have the worst favorability ratings and trustworthiness scores of the featured candidates.

…which is, apparently, not currently a problem for the Vice President. I say ‘currently’ because one major reason why Joe Biden enjoys more robust favorability numbers than more or less anybody else on the Democratic side is because he doesn’t do anything. And of all the Democratic candidates, I think that possibly Joe Biden is the most likely to pull a John McCain and assume that the eventual Republican opponent’s going to go easy on him because, hey, old Joe’s been around for decades and everybody likes him.

:pause:

Of the sitting Senators running, the three most likely to get the nomination were all elected in 2010. They don’t remember Joe Biden from, say, the Senate cafeteria. They remember him from the bitter wars that have been roiling the Senate floor since 2011, and Joe Biden was on the wrong side. And even if they were inclined to pull punches, I suspect that our own base would simply flat-out revolt if one of them tried. I may not be impressed with the candidates’ current silly-season antics, but I do think that we’re going to pick a bare-knuckle brawler for the Presidential nod this time.

I don’t think old Joe’s ready for that. Which does not exactly fill my heart with grief. I doubt that it fills yours, either.

Moe Lane (crosspost)