John Kerry endorses Biden, why it only kind of matters

With John Kerry giving his endorsement to Joe Biden yesterday afternoon, there are now two high-profile democrats who have endorsed someone early in the race, AOC and the Squad being the clear big one and now Kerry being second on the list. While Kerry has been overall irrelevant among the political news junkies, his history in the Dem party still puts him leagues above most other possible endorsements 

Former nominee for the Dem party in 2004

Secretary of State for Obama from 2012 to 2016

Former Senator from 1984 to 2012 

Short of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi, Kerry is still one of the higher ranking Dems in the entire party based on resume and televised exposure. Its quite tempting to dismiss Kerry as a now irrelevant has-been, but his endorsement of Biden does have one particular ramification: It shows the limits of how far Buttigieg can lure voters

Sanders and Warren voters likely dont give a flying fuck what Kerry thinks or who he endorses. You can easily put him in a group with Biden and Hillary as 'establishment' Dems who have spent decades in public service and want to use the system to make changes to it, rather then overhaul the system entirely. Kerrys endorsement of Biden may only convince them more to back Warren or Sanders if anything. 

But consider this. What if Kerry didnt endorse Biden, and instead endorsed Buttigieg? Or Klobuchar? Or Bloomberg? Had Kerry endorsed someone outside of Biden that was in the moderate/centrist faction of the party, it would be a MASSIVE vote of no confidence in Biden as the potential nominee, and cause a lot of Biden supporters to reevaluate their support for him. Kerry and Biden's political resumes are almost identical if not parallel in terms of the positions theyve held and how far theyve gone and how they have served the white house directly after failing to win it themselves. For Kerry to have endorsed someone else other than Biden, THAT would have been noteworthy. 

By endorsing Biden, Kerry is not going to convince many people who werent already leaning towards Biden to switch over, and overall the endorsement will probably have little effect on overall polling (compared to AOC, whose endorsement of Bernie over Warren was so high profile that now Sanders is leading Warren in most major polls). The effect his endorsement DOES have on the race is less conspicuous. It lowers the ceiling on how high candidates like Buttigieg or Klobuchar or Bloomberg can go in trying to show they are a viable replacement to Biden for those who are more moderate and dont quite like Sanders and Warren. 

Harris dropped out of the race due to campaign funding issues, others like Booker, Castro, Gabbard, and Klobuchar are likely on their way. Buttigeig can rely on his massive fundraising to keep him around, while Steyer and Bloomberg can continue to try to buy the nomination themselves, but Kerry's endorsement shows that these other lower tier moderate candidates have effectively run out of time if they are still in the single digits at this point. 

TLDR: His endorsement of Biden matters because Kerry didnt endorse someone else, which would have caused MASSIVE problems for Biden had he done so

The fact that Biden is still in the primaries is insane.

His basic message is "if you don't like me, then vote for the other guy."

Hillary might have been dismissive of voters, but Biden takes it to a new level.

Yeah he is kind of terrible. Any time he gets challenged at all, on anything, at his events he seems to lose it.

Some guy questions why he thinks it's ok for his son to engage in corruption, he loses it and calls him fat. Someone asks about his border policy, he tells them to vote for trump. Someone questions his environmental record/policy he tells them to vote for someone else. 

If you can't explain to people why you think your policy is the correct one, you either don't really believe in your policy or you just don't have the emotional stability to be a politician. 

Honestly, the only reason he has any support, especially the black voters, is that his base is deluded into thinking he is somehow similar to Obama because he was his VP.

I wonder if that will change when it becomes clear Obama will never endorse Biden.

I still think Obama is going to endorse Warren at the last possible minute and completely sway the primaries.

Strongly disagree. Obama pretended to be a progressive to win the nomination and election, then immediately shifted right once elected. He likes to be seen as the standard bearer of progress, when really he was mostly just standing in the way. 

If Sanders or Warren win, they will almost certainly crap all over his legacy. His paltry gains will look extremely sad once an actual progressive takes over. His legacy would be tarnished and history would remember him as the failure that lead to trump. 

I think he plans to stay out of the primary entirely as long as a centrist/corporatist candidate looks like they will win. If Sanders or Warren look like they could win, he will try to undercut them. 

Every president does a thing called "balance the ticket". The VP is almost nothing like the President. Why they think Biden is like Obama is beyond me.

In alot of ways they are the same. They are both centrist, corporatist sellouts. If you are afraid of change, going back to what you know is comforting. 

It is funny considering he was the "change" candidate. Odd how we hate him for almost entirely different reasons.

I would think you would like his stimulus spending, attempts for Obamacare, increase of taxes, etc.

He pretended he was going to be. Then his policies were no different than the any other sellout democrat. 

I don't know a great deal about this aspect. But understanding is it was needed. But again, that is no different than any other democrat, or alot of republicans would have done. 

He sold out before he started. His starting point was a right wing plan. Then spent years trying to convince republicans to support it and only ended up watering down the already right wing plan. He tried to reform health care and ended up failing miserably. 

1) he cut taxes as well as raised some.

2) raising taxes is not a good thing or a bad thing. If those taxes go to an important service then it is a good thing. If they go to bailing out wall street bankers that caused a financial crisis, then it is a bad thing.