Did Biden Cost Us A Seat In Michigan?

Joe Biden by Nancy Ohanian

Matt Longjohn was a good solid progressive candidate last year in MI-06, the southwest Michigan district that is centered on Kalamazoo and includes all or part of 6 counties: Kalamazoo (the biggest and overwhelmingly blue), Berrien, Allegan, Van Buren, St. Joseph and Cass. Upton only managed to get 50.2% of the vote, his worst showing ever. Not one poll leading up to the election showed Upton hitting 50% and the last poll, from Change Research, had Longjohn beating him 42-40%. The Change Research polling for half a dozen tight races was extremely predictive, except in MI-06.

Upton, a hereditary multimillionaire, out-spent Longjohn $3,527,274 to $1,443,894. The DCCC largely ignored the race, as they did with nearly all progressive candidates, spending just $219,564. Did the DCCC kill the chance to replace Upton with a progressive? They had a role-- but apparently not as much as Joe Biden's! According to Alexander Burns' report, Biden's Paid Speech Buoyed The GOP In Midwest Battleground, Biden, well known as a virtual gaffe machine-- worse now that he's been getting increasingly senile-- stumbled into the MI-06 race and screwed it up for Longjohn, not on purpose, of course, but because he's still an asshole.

It was just before the election in November in one of the biggest and most crucial towns in the district, Benton Harbor in swingy Berrien County. Burns wrote that Biden "took the stage at Lake Michigan College as Representative Fred Upton, a long-serving Republican from the area, faced the toughest race of his career. But Mr. Biden was not there to denounce Mr. Upton. Instead, he was collecting $200,000 from the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan to address a Republican-leaning audience, according to a speaking contract obtained by the New York Times and interviews with organizers. The group, a business-minded civic organization, is supported in part by an Upton family foundation."

Biden stunned Democrats and elated Republicans by praising Mr. Upton while the lawmaker looked on from the audience. Alluding to Mr. Upton’s support for a landmark medical-research law, Mr. Biden called him a champion in the fight against cancer-- and “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with.”

Mr. Biden’s remarks, coming amid a wide-ranging discourse on American politics, quickly appeared in Republican advertising. The local Democratic Party pleaded with Mr. Biden to repair what it saw as a damaging error, to no avail. On Nov. 6, Mr. Upton defeated his Democratic challenger by four and a half percentage points.

As Mr. Biden considers a bid for the presidency in 2020, the episode underscores his potential vulnerabilities in a fight for the Democratic nomination and raises questions about his judgment as a party leader. Mr. Biden has attempted to strike a balance since leaving office, presenting himself as a unifying statesman who could unseat President Trump while also working to amass a modest fortune of several million dollars.

But Mr. Biden’s appearance in Michigan plainly set his lucrative personal activities at odds with what some Democrats saw as his duty to the party, linking him with a civic group seen as tilting to the right and undermining Democrats’ effort to defeat Mr. Upton, a powerful lawmaker who in 2017 helped craft a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Ac

Eric Lester, a retired physician who chaired the Democratic Party in Berrien County, Mich., during the midterms, said he viewed Mr. Biden’s supportive remarks about Mr. Upton as a betrayal. Mr. Lester, who attended the speech, said he had confronted an aide to Mr. Biden in the hallway, telling him the former vice president had badly damaged the Democratic cause.

“It just gives Fred Upton cover and makes it possible for him to continue to pretend to be a useful, bipartisan fellow,” Mr. Lester recalled saying, adding, “I entered the hall with positive feelings about Mr. Biden and felt very frustrated.”

Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and veteran of several presidential campaigns, said it was an open question whether voters in the party would punish candidates they see as overly friendly or cooperative with Republicans. He suggested that could be one of the defining pressures for Mr. Biden if he announces his candidacy.

“I really believe the country does not want to be at war with each other,” Mr. Trippi said. “But there is also the polarization going on, where people say: Damn it, I want to fight.”

Several people involved in planning the event said Mr. Upton, 65, had no role in arranging Mr. Biden’s appearance, and Mr. Upton said he was not involved. There is no evidence Mr. Biden was motivated to praise the lawmaker by anything other than sincere admiration, stemming from Mr. Upton’s role in crafting the 21st Century Cures Act after the death of Mr. Biden’s elder son, Beau, from cancer in 2015.

Bill Russo, a spokesman for Mr. Biden, said the research-funding legislation was the foundation of Mr. Biden’s relationship with Mr. Upton.

“It was one of the few bipartisan bills passed in an otherwise deeply divided and gridlocked Congress,” Mr. Russo said. “Vice President Biden believes to his core that you can disagree politically on a lot and still work together in good faith on issues of common cause-- like funding cancer research.”

Regarding Mr. Biden’s decision not to endorse Mr. Upton’s Democratic challenger, Matt Longjohn, Mr. Russo said the former vice president “received hundreds of requests for endorsements from all over the country and endorsed in 135 races this cycle where his impact could be greatest.”

Since leaving office, Mr. Biden has sought out opportunities to earn substantial income-- mainly through paid speeches and a multimillion-dollar book deal-- and his newfound wealth would be closely scrutinized in a presidential race. Mindful of Hillary Clinton’s stumbles in the 2016 presidential race, Mr. Biden has attempted to set guidelines for his activities that would minimize any political sensitivity, declining to give paid speeches to big banks or to accept foreign contributions to several nonprofit organizations he controls.

Mr. Biden has continued to pursue commercial activities while he is in the final stage of making a 2020 decision; he is scheduled to give a talk in Grand Prairie, Tex., a suburb of Dallas, on Thursday, as part of an extended tour promoting his 2017 book, Promise Me, Dad.

The speaking contract for Mr. Biden’s October appearance in Michigan suggests that the popular Democrat would have known he was addressing a Republican-leaning crowd. The speaking series was underwritten in part by organizations connected to Mr. Upton’s family: Among the biggest sponsors listed on the Economic Club’s website are the Whirlpool Corporation, which was co-founded by Mr. Upton’s grandfather, and the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, a family charity named for the same man.

The contract for Mr. Biden’s visit shows he was paid $200,000 for his appearance, including a $150,000 speaking fee and a $50,000 travel allowance. It also specifies that the audience would be “primarily older, conservative Republicans and local community members.” The document was disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request made by America Rising, a Republican group that conducts research on Democratic candidates.

It is unclear whether the fees Mr. Biden received in this case are standard for all his speeches. Mr. Biden’s aides have declined to confirm what his rates are for paid appearances, including the appearance in Michigan, or how much he has earned through paid speaking since leaving office. In at least one instance, his speaking bureau, Creative Artists Agency, offered a reduced rate of $100,000, plus travel expenses, to the University of Utah.

If Mr. Biden were to have charged a similar range of fees for all his comparable speeches since leaving office, he would most likely have collected between $4 million and $5 million through speeches over the last two years.

Representatives of Lake Michigan College, which recently took over management of the Economic Club speaker series, and the Fredrick S. Upton Foundation confirmed that the Upton organization was a major sponsor of the series. Both organizations said Mr. Upton had no role in proposing or choosing the speakers. Lisa Cripps-Downey, president of the Berrien Community Foundation, a nonprofit that administers the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, confirmed that the organization had given substantial funding to the Economic Club, with an annual grant of $80,000 over the last three years-- a total close to a quarter-million dollars.

“When we see the speakers, we’re just as surprised as everybody else,” Ms. Cripps-Downey said.

Mr. Russo said Mr. Biden’s team had been aware that the Frederick S. Upton Foundation helped fund the Economic Club. He said Biden aides had vetted the funding sources for the speaking series and concluded they met his standards.

Mr. Upton, who confirmed in a statement that he attended Mr. Biden’s speech at Lake Michigan College, said he had “no idea” that Mr. Biden would refer to him at all, let alone so favorably. The two men ran into each other briefly at the venue, before Mr. Biden’s speech, and they agreed to follow up to discuss the medical-research law’s implementation, an aide to Mr. Upton said.

“Being in the audience with my family and hearing Vice President Biden reference our work together was an immense honor,” Mr. Upton said. “He was warmly received by everyone in attendance who were thrilled to have him there, including myself.”

For campus speeches, Mr. Biden refuses to let schools pay him with funds that come from the government or from extra fees charged to students-- requirements that appear to have been met in this case.

Candice Elders, a spokeswoman for Lake Michigan College, said funding for the speaking series there “comes from private sources through ticket sales, memberships, contributions, grants, sponsorships and event proceeds.” She said the grant from the Frederick S. Upton Foundation is part of a fund designed to make up any difference between expenses for the speaker series and the revenue brought in by events. Ms. Elders estimated that the Upton grant makes up about 11 percent of the series budget.

Ms. Elders said that no public money was used for the event, and that Mr. Biden addressed a group that included several hundred college and high school students while he was on campus. “Young people from area schools and nonprofit organizations are routinely invited to attend Economic Club events at no cost,” Ms. Elders said.

The greatest impact of Mr. Biden’s speech, however, was outside the lecture hall. His remarks about Mr. Upton ricocheted through Michigan’s Sixth Congressional District. Mr. Upton alluded to Mr. Biden’s praise in a debate with Mr. Longjohn the next day, and his campaign sent out a mailer stressing Mr. Upton’s bipartisan streak, including Mr. Biden’s description of him as “the reason we’re going to beat cancer.”

A business-backed Republican group, Defending Main Street, ran digital ads on Facebook showing a grinning Mr. Biden and the crucial quote-- “Fred Upton is one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with”-- above a mock version of the former vice president’s signature.

Mr. Lester, the local Democratic chairman, said he strove to contain the damage. In an email to Mr. Biden’s staff, Mr. Lester implored the former vice president to back Mr. Longjohn: “Surely VP Biden did not intend to endorse Mr. Upton and slight the local Democratic candidate here,” he wrote.

Mr. Longjohn, the former national health officer of the YMCA, said in an interview that he had been disappointed to see Mr. Biden “clap Mr. Upton on the back in an establishment political way.” He said his campaign had reached out to Mr. Biden’s staff through an intermediary, seeking to discuss his involvement in the race.

“There was nothing but silence,” Mr. Longjohn said. “We had just requested a phone call and there was no response.”

Suggested follow-up reading: The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part IV, Joe Biden... or these 7 posts explaining why Biden should not be the Democratic nominee in 2020. It's hard to think of a worse next president to follow Trump-- but if pressed I can. Biden would be the Democrats' Warren G. Harding... and that turned out rather badly for everyone, especially the American people.