Former Vice President Joe Biden has been reminded in short order of the lingering questions he’ll need to address. | Cindy Ord/Getty Images 2020 elections Biden blindsided by dose of 2020 reality The former vice president slogs through a rough stretch as he considers a third bid for the White House.

Joe Biden is enduring the roughest stretch of any candidate in the Democratic presidential primary, and he’s not even a candidate yet.

In a two-week period in which his attempts to smooth a path into the 2020 race only seemed to underscore the obstacles confronting his prospective candidacy, the former vice president got a concentrated dose of what’s in store for him if he embarks on a third run for the White House.


The hardest hit came Friday, when Lucy Flores, Nevada’s Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014, said she was made uncomfortable by Biden’s attentions that year when he was too physical with her at a campaign event.

“He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head,” Flores wrote in The Cut . “My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused.”

From that encounter to his ongoing apology tour for the way he handled sexual harassment allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas to an awkward float about a possible running mate to mounting questions about his son’s business dealings in Ukraine, Biden has been reminded in short order of the lingering questions he’ll need to address. Namely, whether there is a place for a 76-year-old white male career politician in a historic diverse field of candidates, and whether his long career in public service has left him with a record that is out of sync with a party that’s rapidly moving leftward.

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“Biden’s record is at odds with where the Democratic Party is in 2020,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive consultant who advised Cynthia Nixon's primary campaign against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “Primaries are tough, and Joe Biden, when you’re this old and running for president, you have a pretty long record for people to go through.”

Biden spokesman Bill Russo indicated that Friday’s allegation was a surprise.

“Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable,” Russo said in a written statement, “nor do they recall what she describes.”

A picture from the event also shows Biden also burying his nose in the hair of actress and activist Eva Longoria. Katz, a former staffer in the U.S. Senate — where Biden had served for 36 years before becoming President Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009 — said it was easy to believe Flores’ accusation.

“The thing that’s so challenging for team Biden is that everything that Lucy Flores said seems very, very true,” Katz said. “There’s literally highlight reels of Biden, whether it’s with world leaders or granddaughters of incoming members of Congress, doing things that seem a little off — on camera.”

Cristobal Alex, a Biden adviser referenced anonymously in Flores’ account, said in a statement that he felt “sucker-punched and surprised” when he read the essay. He contended that Flores misrepresented a private conversation with him and that her recollection of the event did not match his.

Still, the rise of the #MeToo movement and a trove of videos and photos have placed Biden under fresh scrutiny. While Biden’s Democratic critics make sure to add that there’s no comparing him to President Donald Trump — who has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and once said in a hot-mic moment that he could grab and kiss women because “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — they also concede the focus on Biden’s overly familiar style will make it more difficult to draw a sharp contrast with Trump.

Yet that isn’t all Biden is contending with. Three days before Flores went public, Biden was busy expressing regret for his treatment of another woman of color involving a different sexual harassment issue: The 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings he chaired in 1991, in which Anita Hill accused Thomas of improper behavior.

“She paid a terrible price. She was abused through the hearing,” Biden said of Hill during the Biden Courage Awards ceremony in New York. “To this day, I regret I couldn’t get her the kind of hearing she deserved.”

The attempts to tackle the Hill issue have failed to put the issue behind him — despite what amount to public apologies, Biden continues to draw criticism for not taking responsibility for his handling of the hearings and not apologizing directly to Hill.

Democratic pollster Joel Benenson, who was the chief strategist for Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, noted that “the public is going to be the ultimate arbiter of whether the regret and whether what he says on this issue is sufficient.”

Sandwiched between those two flaps was a third concerning 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who appeared on two television shows to shoot down rumors she would join Biden’s ticket as a running mate before he clinched the nomination.

The trial balloon, which appeared to come from Biden’s inner circle, didn’t have the intended effect. Far from generating excitement about the prospect of introducing an element of youth and diversity to his prospective bid, the float smacked of desperation.

A Biden spokesman denied that there were “discussions on a precooked ticket,” calling them ”false, plain and simple.”

Benenson sounded surprised by the rumors that Biden advisers wanted to pick Abrams as a running mate before he even announced.

“Voters ultimately do not like gimmicks. They also, I believe, don’t like the presumption of announcing your vice presidential choice before you’re the nominee,” Benenson said. “Iowa and New Hampshire are retail politics on steroids. And for you to suggest that you are looking past them and deciding who your vice president should be? I think it plays wrong.”

Republicans were gleeful at the prospect of Biden either making the move or being so flat-footed that he didn’t suppress the rumors fast enough because it made him look weak.

“This is consultant malpractice,” said Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, a top Trump defender and surrogate. “Either they actually considered this as a trial balloon and didn’t realize how bad it made Biden look or they didn’t get in front of it to shoot it down because they wanted it to be true. ... We hope he gets in the race and we hope he’s the Democrats’ nominee.”

Republicans and Democrats alike are laying the groundwork to face Biden by examining the business deals of his son, Hunter Biden, when Joe Biden was vice president. It’s an issue of such grave concern to Biden, who lost his other son, Beau Biden, to cancer, that he has told close associates it’s a major factor in his decision of whether to run.

To start off the week, the conservative website One America News Network featured a report Monday about Hunter Biden’s ties to a Ukrainian oligarch and a natural gas company in 2014, an arrangement that was also criticized a year later in a New York Times editorial .

As with the allegations lodged by Flores against Joe Biden, the former vice president must not only determine how to respond but also how to answer critics who will say his son's business interests would make it harder for him as a nominee to contrast his record with Trump on the question of ties to Russia.

Trump’s defenders, who have blamed Ukrainian intelligence for some of the Trump-Russia stories, say they look forward to making Democrats pay for it if and when Biden enters the race.

“I’m pretty confident Joe Biden will be called out by his presidential primary competitors for his son getting rich off a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch’s gas company,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign consultant and top Trump defender.

He pointed to a connection with Trump’s former campaign manager that should make Democrats uneasy.

“Wait till they find out Hunter Biden’s oligarch is from the same political party Paul Manafort consulted in Ukraine,” he said. “Old ‘Lunch Bucket Joe’ would be smart to not even get in the race.”

Alex Thompson contributed to this report.