There’s been a lot of Joe Biden news–will he run?–and one of the things that has been clear to me is that a significant part of the conversation is being driven by elite, traditional media and the insiders of the Democratic Party who (a) are petrified–in the latter’s case–that the “presumed front-runner”, if she is the nominee, will lose the White House (and potentially open the door to 1-3 more right-wing Supreme Court nominees and (b) are petrified–in both cases–that Bernie’s movement is going to leave them outside the money trough they all suck off.

A question: would Biden drain Bernie’s support? Nah.

Here’s a decent take on that:

Unlike Warren or Bernie Sanders, the Vermont progressive who’s assumed the support of many Warren backers, Biden is a pillar of the Democratic establishment, vice president in an administration that many progressives consider too centrist.That puts him in roughly the same position as Hillary Clinton: liberal on many issues, but a traditional party loyalist at the end of the day.

And:

Still, it’s not like the Warren acolytes have been sitting around waiting for a new leader. The vast majority have already signed up with Sanders, from the more casual to the top professional political leaders: Kurt Ehrenberg, the Run Warren Run point person in New Hampshire, and Blair Lawton, the point person in Iowa, are both now working for Sanders.

And I think Charles Chamberlain, president of Democracy for America, is right:

At the end of the day, Chamberlain added, “I think it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll see a lot of switching from people who support Bernie Sanders to support Joe Biden.”

And:

John Colombo, the Franklin County Iowa Democratic Party Chair who signed a letter in May urging Warren to run, and who remains without a candidate in the primary, said he’d like to see Biden enter the fray. That doesn’t mean, though, that he or any of the other pro-Warren people will get behind him — even if she endorsed him.“A lot of the infrastructure that was in the Run Warren Run campaign is going to the Sanders campaign, I don’t think they’d abandon that. But I could see Hillary supporters switching over,” Colombo said. “I don’t think endorsements do the trick here in Iowa. People just don’t care.” There’s also the chance that a Warren endorsement could backfire — for Biden, and for herself. “Frankly I think you’d have a ton of very angry Bernie Sanders supporters in the state, and you’d have a lot of rather confused and upset Clinton supporters, too,” said David Watters, a New Hampshire state senator from Dover who signed a letter in March urging Warren to run, but who is now with Clinton. “If Warren wanted to have her hand in the presidential race she should have run herself.”

This is one of those clear examples where personality blinds some to the reality of policy and values.

I don’t doubt Joe Biden is a nice guy, the “Everyman” who was just “Joe” on his daily rides home on Amtrak to be with his family every night when he served in the Senate. By the way, I don’t doubt that Hillary Clinton is nice to her family and a great grandmother.

That’s not the point.

Biden is the establishment. He has been a long-time defender of the credit card industry–and he led the campaign to pass a bankruptcy bill that protected credit card companies and hurt millions of regular working Americans. And, respectfully, Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court thanks to Biden (for those who have forgotten Biden ceding the gavel essentially and telling Thomas, “You have the benefit of the doubt, Judge” when Republicans were smearing Anita Hill, see here)–and that has hurt millions of people and set back the nation on civil rights, workers rights and just plain sanity.

Bernie represents a movement. A revolution.

So, Joe, by all means, enter the race. But, we’re very happy with our candidate.