A big surprise emerged today when Beau Biden, Attorney General of Delaware and son of Vice President Joe Biden, announced he would not run for his father’s Senate seat.
It is believed possible that the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown may have affected the younger Biden’s decision. It was seen as easier for him to keep his position as Attorney General, than to challenge Mike Castle, the present Delaware Congressman, who has had a long career in that chamber and is now running as the GOP candidate for the Senate.
The problem with this decision, however, is the message it sends, that the Democrats are basically giving up the seat that was Joe Biden’s for 36 years. Interim Senator Ted Kaufman, the former aide to Joe Biden, has made clear he will just finish out the two year term to the end of the year, rather than run for a full term.
The whole situation seems to make no sense, and it is a shame that the Democrats are ready to just concede the seat. At this rate, the Democrats could lose more seats than one once thought.
The Cook Political Report projects that the GOP will gain 5-7 seats in the Senate this year as things now stand. If that is the case, then the Democrats had better get moving now to get some of their agenda accomplished, including health care in some form, because if the Senate is something like only 52 to 54 seats for the Democrats in 2011-2012, it will be a major battle to get anything done before the Presidential election. And as stated earlier, it will make replacements of aging Supreme Court Justices Stevens and Ginsberg all the more complex and difficult!