WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd May, 2020) Hillary Clinton's recent endorsement of Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate is unlikely to give him any significant boost in his bid to defeat President Donald Trump, analysts told Sputnik.
Clinton, a twice unsuccessful presidential candidate herself in 2008 and 2016, endorsed Biden in a podcast appearance with him on Tuesday.
University of Houston Professor of History Gerald Horne said the move will hardly make a difference, except perhaps in one area.
"I do not think Hillary Rodham Clinton's endorsement is meaningful, though it may help with women voters in suburbs," Horne said.
Biden, he added, has adopted a passive campaign apparently designed to showcase Trump's own embarrassments and missteps.
"So far, Biden's approach seems to be to let Trump hang himself via verbal flubs like mainlining bleach. But that is insufficient," he said.
Trump still enjoyed a loyal and widespread political support base that had not eroded whereas Biden was relying on a base that suffered greatly from long-established Republican policies to suppress its potential, Horne pointed out.
"Trump's approval rating in good times and bad rarely dips below 43 percent, while Biden's base has to contend with voter suppression, disproportionate death from Coronavirus" and other factors, Horne said.
University of Pittsburgh Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner went even further and said Clinton's endorsement would not help Biden at all.
"Hillary Clinton's endorsement would have zero effect. No one is paying any attention to her these days. Biden is her clone anyway," he said.
Brenner said Trump's victory was not inevitable or foreordained but that his biggest liability was himself.
"This is not an election - it's a referendum on Trump. Trump vs Trump means that Biden might as well stay quarantined. If he does talk, there is a three out of ten chance that he'll say or do something that will hurt and five out of ten chance that he would help himself," he said.
Political commentator Professor John Walsh said Clinton's intervention to support Biden appeared bizarre.
"It seems like an ugly joke. She adds an extra dose of hypocrisy, cruelty and perhaps even dementia to the campaign of QuidProJoe, Viceroy of Ukraine, Prince of Plagiarism, Lord of the Pivot, Knight of Nookie, Scourge of Siberia and of all neighboring regions," Walsh said.
The choice between Trump and Biden was a devastating comment on the decay of US politics and international standing, Walsh observed.
"People like to wax poetic about the decline of Empire - but if the Biden/Trump campaign is not a sign of it, I do not know what is," Walsh said.
Historian and political commentator Dan Lazare noted that Clinton's endorsement was another example of how the Democratic Party's old establishment had rallied round Biden to prevent the more radical Senator Bernie Sanders from winning the presidential nomination.
"I would normally think that Hillary Rodham Clinton's endorsement would have a significant impact. The Democratic Old Guard still has a lot of clout," he said. "Usually Democrats would be happy to see people like Clinton coming out in support of the ticket."
However, Clinton's endorsement of Biden had already been rendered irrelevant by the devastating revelations about Tara Reade's charge of sexual assault against Biden over an incident a quarter century ago, Lazare pointed out.
"Things are no longer normal thanks to one person: Tara Reade. She's the iceberg that's going to sink Biden's ship," Lazare said.
Reade in March said she was sexually assaulted by Biden during an encounter 27 years ago.
Biden in a statement on Friday said the incident "never happened."
