Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Matthew Continetti said Tuesday that "good feelings" for Barack Obama's presidency are driving former Vice President Joe Biden's strong position in 2020 presidential polls, and that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) is currently in a stronger position than Biden to win the Democratic nomination.
Continetti's comments came during a discussion on MSNBC's MTP Daily about Biden's viability as a candidate following recent accusations that he touches women inappropriately in public. Host Chuck Todd asked Continetti whether so much focus on Biden could strengthen the former vice president politically.
"One Democrat from another campaign [said] to me this, Matthew: the one thing that concerns them about Biden, actually, is that the large debate that the party is having means the entire conversation is about Joe Biden," Todd said. "He said that happened four years ago with Trump: you so suck up the oxygen that actually he ends up not deflating because everything is a debate about Biden, just like everything became a debate about [Donald] Trump [in 2016]."
Continetti disagreed, saying that Sanders, not Biden, is the "Trump analogue" in the 2020 Democratic primary.
"[Sanders has] raised the most money, he's neck and neck in all the polls, he has all of the ideological energy, and he's going to split the party just the way that Trump split the Republican Party," Continetti said. "I think with Biden, there's the generational issue you discussed in the previous section."
Continetti added that, unlike other Democratic presidential contenders, Biden does not have a constituency, "other than these polls, which may well just be name ID and good feelings for the Barack Obama presidency."
Biden is currently leading his 2020 Democratic rivals in most of the major polls.