Hillary Clinton is reportedly a bit worried over whether Joe Biden will enter the presidential race, and her campaign is now orchestrating a concerted effort to prevent that from happening.
In public, Clinton has offered nothing but praise for the vice president, but behind the scenes, it's a slightly different story, with Clinton attempting to portray her dominance over the Democratic party and discourage people from donating to and endorsing Biden, according to The Associated Press.
"She has rolled out a string of high-profile endorsements in the early-voting contests of Iowa and South Carolina and scheduled an onslaught of fundraisers across the country in the effort to throw cold water on a possible Biden bid," writes AP.
In the past few weeks, Biden has met with advisers and influential Democrats as he considers making a bid for the presidency, and Biden received a blessing from President Obama this week. But Biden said Wednesday that while he is "giving this a lot of thought," his heart and soul are both still "pretty well banged up" from the recent loss of his son Beau Biden to brain cancer. His son's dying wish was that his father enter the race, according to the Daily Caller.
The Clinton team has contacted donors who have publicly expressed support for Biden, with Clinton herself even making a few calls to voice her concern, according to donors and Democratic strategists who spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.
"What they're trying to manage now is the external narrative among supporters and others; it's a national hand-holding exercise," according to one Democrat involved with Clinton's fundraising and political planning, reports Politico. "That's probably been a little bit compounded or magnified because of the external issues that are out there. The emails."
"But baseball's a long season, and there are periods where you just have to grind it out for a couple of weeks. Even for championship teams. This is a grind week for the campaign," the source added.
One of the tougher obstacles Clinton needs to overcome is the perception that her campaign is going off the rails due to a number of scandals, most recently her exclusive use of a private email system during her tenure as secretary of state, which investigators say she used to send and receive highly classified information that was likely stolen by foreign government hackers.
Longtime Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who helped lead the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, told Politico: "It's not just about the Gowdy [Benghazi] Committee and the Republicans, it's also about the press. The problem is that as the State Department goes through this process and releases more and more emails, every time, there's a story."
"So I don't know what they can say that puts the story behind them. She obviously believes she can survive this," he added.
The five Democratic presidential candidates - Clinton, Lincoln Chaffee, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders and Jim Webb - will address members of the Democratic National Committee on Friday during their summer meeting in downtown Minneapolis, according to CBS.
