Biden is just Hillary ‘Clinton but far more diminished’: Analyst

An American political analyst says leading US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is just Hillary Clinton "but far more diminished.”

Clinton was the Democratic nominee in 2016 who lost the election to Donald Trump.

Biden disclosed on Friday he has told his Democratic rival Senator Bernie Sanders that he is moving forward with cabinet and vice presidential picks. The former vice president said he is forming a committee to vet potential vice presidential candidates “sometime in the middle of the month.”

"One of the things I learned a long time ago, and I really mean this, a good leader has to be willing to have people that are smarter than them, know more than they know about a subject, bring in people who in fact have an expertise you don’t have,” Biden said, according to a pool report.

“And so I am in the process and I actually had this discussion with Bernie. He’s a friend. We’re competitors. He’s a friend. I don’t want him to think I’m being presumptuous but you have to start now deciding who you’re going to have background checks done on as potential vice presidential candidates and it takes time,” he added.

Myles Hoenig, a former Green Party candidate for Congress, said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday that Sanders will serve like “the sheepdog” he was in 2016 by trying to bring his supporters along.

Hoenig said, “Half the Democrats are seeing light at the end of the tunnel with Biden announcing he’s in the process of picking a cabinet. The long Trump nightmare is coming to an end. Or so they think. The other half is shaking in its boots, afraid that the train wreck that’s about to happen in November is on track and running its course.”

“To say to Sanders that he doesn’t want to be presumptuous is just that, presumptuous. Although Sanders has a long road ahead to win the nomination, he knows as well as Biden and everyone else that the party apparatus of the DNC will not permit him to win and like in 2016, will rig the process so that he doesn’t. What no one knows in the party machinery is whether or not they’ll let Biden win the nomination, as he is getting poisonous to their chances each week that goes by,” he stated.

“Biden talks of leadership yet in this moment of crisis his focus is putting together an imaginary cabinet, and with Obama’s advice, it’s very likely to be put together by Citigroup again or some other banking conglomerate. A people’s cabinet? Not in anyone’s dreams if it’s a Biden administration,” he said.  

“It is Sanders, however, who has shown leadership during this crisis, as he has just put out an extensive plan for how the federal government, of which he hopes to be its CEO, will deal with everyday people’s everyday concerns and fears. And this is without campaigning. Clearly, Biden is trying to redefine ‘leadership’ and it will only please some of the Democrats,” he noted.

“If conversations are happening between the two staffs, then both camps are likely complicit in rerunning the 2016 election. Biden is just Clinton but far more diminished and Sanders will serve as the sheepdog he was in rallying around his supporters for a candidate whose positions are nearly diametrically opposite his. The result is most likely the same if Biden is the selected candidate,” he observed.

“Trump will most likely win and blame will go to Sanders for not encouraging hard enough his followers to blindly go and pull the Democratic lever. The Democratic establishment is already painting a ‘blame Bernie’ picture, just in case. And like 2016, they’ll never acknowledge their failures and will try again in 2024 with the same failed strategy,” the analyst concluded.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk