Biden Appears to Drop His Opposition to a Super PAC

Joe Biden is apparently dropping his long-held opposition to the creation of an outside group that would supply an infusion of money to benefit his campaign, a recognition that financial struggles are becoming a major problem for his presidential prospects.

Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, released a statement Thursday afternoon saying that Biden would reform campaign finance if he is president, but in the meantime, he would open the door to outside money.

“As president, Joe Biden will push to remove private money from our federal elections. He will advocate for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end the era of unbridled spending by Super PACs,” Bedingfield wrote. “Until we have these badly needed reforms, we will see more than a billion dollars in spending by Trump and his allies to re-elect this corrupt president.”

She added, “In this time of crisis in our politics, it is not surprising that those who are dedicated to defeating Donald Trump are organizing in every way permitted by current law to bring an end to his disastrous presidency.”

Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo declined to provide further clarification on the statement or to comment on why the campaign is reversing what had been a long-held position.

The decision could expose Biden to criticism from his Democratic primary rivals – particularly Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. – who have made fighting against wealthy political interests a centerpiece of their campaigns. Both have eschewed the high-dollar fundraisers that Biden has relied upon, and instead have built grass-roots donor networks that have fueled their campaigns.

“The former vice president has been unable to generate grassroots support, and now his campaign is endorsing an effort to buy the primary through a super PAC that can rake in unlimited cash from billionaires and corporations,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement. “That’s not how we defeat Trump. It’s a recipe to maintain a corrupt political system which enriches wealthy donors and leaves the working class behind.”

The decision is also bound to trigger accusations of flip-flopping, given that Biden has long said he would reject such outside help. His campaign advisers were aggressively opposed to the idea as recently as three weeks ago, pushing back against a Washington Post report stating that the campaign “has publicly discouraged” outside help because they felt it was not worded strongly enough.

Biden wrote in his 2017 book that he would have rejected outside money if he had run in 2016.

“It was tempting to play the game because we would be getting such a late start. And for the first time in all my years of campaigning, I knew there was big money out there for me,” Biden wrote. “But I also knew people were sick of it all. ‘We the People’ didn’t ring so true anymore. It was more like ‘We the Donors.’ ”

“And everybody understood that in a system awash with money, the middle class didn’t have a fighting chance,” he added.

Biden allies began meeting weeks ago to discuss launching a super PAC. Those discussions emerged amid dissatisfaction about some components of Biden’s campaign, as well as worry that he was being naive about what would be required to counter Trump’s attacks while simultaneously making his own case.

Among those involved in the talks have been Larry Rasky, who has known Biden for decades and has worked on both of his previous presidential campaigns; former Biden staffer Mark Doyle; Julianna Smoot, a Democratic fundraiser who led Barack Obama’s campaign finance team in 2008 and was his deputy campaign manager in 2012; and Democratic consultant Mark Riddle.

Biden has struggled to raise money, and last week his campaign reported having $9 million on hand, roughly a third as much as some of his top Democratic rivals. In the statement released Thursday, the Biden campaign emphasized the challenge of facing Trump.

“Let’s be clear: Donald Trump has decided that the general election has already begun,” Bedingfield said in the statement, first reported by NBC News. “He and his allies are already spending [a] massive amount of money on paid television and digital advertising to intervene directly in Democratic primaries with the goal of preventing Joe Biden, the opponent that Trump fears most, from becoming the Democratic nominee.”