Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has said from day 1 that they expected a competitive primary. But a challenge from the sitting vice president is competition they would just as soon avoid.
Rather than attempt to directly push Joe Biden away from a run, however, Clinton backers are biding their time and hoping the veep decides against a run himself. Baring that, they’re counting on their superior organization and fundraising to carry the day.
This week, Clinton is subtly demonstrating the firepower of her campaign organization as Biden takes the most basic first steps to learn about legal and logistical deadlines.
The former secretary of state was supposed to be on vacation this week, but instead she traveled to Iowa on Thursday to campaign with the state’s popular former governor and current U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who endorsed her earlier this week. And on Thursday, she spoke to volunteers in Ohio with that state’s popular former governor.
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Ohio is not typically a stop for candidates at this phase of the campaign, when White House hopefuls tend to spend time in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. But the visit underscores what team Clinton believes is their secret weapon: March 2016.
While other candidates are focusing on the four states with nominating contests in February, Clinton’s vast resources have allowed her to already begin laying the groundwork for contests the following month, when more delegates and states will be in play, including Ohio.
March kicks off with primaries and caucuses in 13 states on one day — known as “super Tuesday” — and continues with another 17 before the end of the month. While the early states can be won with face-to-face contact with voters, the contests in March favor candidates with more resources, since they can deploy staff to multiple states around the country and run more TV ads. And unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, many of the March states have large minority populations, where Clinton tends to outperform her rivals.
By the end of next month, Clinton will have visited a dozen of the states with contests on super Tuesday or in the beginning of the month. The campaign has dispatched surrogates to visit the rest. And with a staff of hundreds of people and tens of millions of dollars in the bank, Clinton’s operation has a big head start in organizing in these states.
“Hillary has a presence everywhere,” said Clinton campaign primary states director Tracey Lewis.
That’s a lesson her campaign learned from the 2008 primary election, aides say, when Obama’s team more seamlessly pivoted from the early states to the contests held in March.
A late start could make breaching the March firewall more difficult for Biden. Former President Bill Clinton got into the race in October of 1992, but times have changed, Clinton backers say, and campaigns need more time to build infrastructure today.
Biden is a bigger threat to Clinton than any of her current challengers. As the sitting vice president, he’s more well known, more experienced, has more access to big donors and has stronger ties to the party establishment than other Democratic candidates.
And unlike Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who are trying to go around Clinton by running to her left, Biden’s path to victory is straight through Clinton.
“I don’t think there is a lot of daylight between their policy agendas,” said Jared Bernstein, a former Biden economic adviser. “Given that his policy agenda is very similar to that of Hillary Clinton, if she were to stumble, his path makes more sense.”
While Sanders draws support from voters who would never have picked Clinton as their first choice, Biden may only gain from Clinton’s loss. And that could lock the two in an ugly zero-sum game for support of the center of the Democratic Party, with potential spillover damage into the general election.
The Clinton campaign is keenly aware of this. The only candidate who truly worries them is Biden, according to outside sources familiar with the campaign’s thinking.
“I think he has to make what is a very difficult decision for himself and his family, and he should have the space and opportunity to decide what he wants to do,” Clinton told reporters Wednesday in Iowa after an event.
So far, at least, Clinton and her outside allies say they won’t try to influence Biden’s decision. “I don’t think it’s useful to be behind the scenes asking this or saying that,” Clinton said. “I’ve done none of that.”








