January 09, 2019
Democrat Joe Biden's youngest brother has a strong feeling the former vice president will challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.
Palm Beach County resident Frank Biden, 65, told the Palm Beach Post he believes his brother is the Democrats' best option to defeat Trump. The former six-term U.S. Senator from Delaware is expected to make a decision in the coming weeks, putting an end to a few years of speculation about his political future at 76 years old.
Biden, who grew up in Scranton, has generally leaned on his blue-collar, Pennsylvania roots to appeal to many of the voters whose economic hardships led them to embrace Donald Trump in 2016.
Frank Biden, who formerly worked for a company that developed charter schools, reflected on the 2016 presidential election with frustration over Hillary Clinton's campaign. Her approach to the political climate in the country was so flawed, Biden said, that his own Pennsylvania relatives, on his mother's side, wound up voting for Trump.
“We never would have lost Pennsylvania, and all my relatives — the Finnegan family — who voted for Donald Trump because they felt slighted by Hillary and her campaign," Frank Biden said. "We never would have not gone to Michigan as the campaign decided not to do because they felt entitled to the votes of those people. Assumptive politics is losing politics."
Advisors close to President Trump told Axios last summer that Biden is his most-feared adversary in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump narrowly defeated Clinton in 2016.
Thus far, only Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has launched an exploratory committee among those short-listed in the 2020 Democratic field. Other names include New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, California Sen. Kamala Harris, former Texas U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose grassroots campaign managed a close race with Clinton in 2016.
"The decision the party has to make is almost an existential one," Frank Biden said.
