Joe Biden: GOP candidates won’t beat Obama

It’s not the Republican candidates Joe Biden is concerned about in November, though he is wary of their money.

“I don’t think we’ll be beaten by those candidates,” the vice president said of the Republican hopefuls at a Chicago fundraiser Thursday night. “I think we’ll be beaten -- if we are -- by something happening in the Eurozone or something happening in the Gulf, which could be difficult for us, or this barrage of ‘super PAC’ money. But even with that I feel good.”

The vice president, ending a two-day campaign swing that also included events in Iowa and Wisconsin, told Democratic donors that the GOP candidates had staked out positions beyond the mainstream, like wanting to reverse a Supreme Court ruling legalizing contraception.

“We’re going to win this election” because President Obama is the best candidate, Biden said, and also because of the support from donors like the 60 or so at the Lincoln Park event Thursday night.

“Thank God there’s rooms like this I’ve been able to go in to all around the country. You guys are putting us in the game,” he said.

Biden’s comments on the potential advantage the eventual Republican nominee will have from the outside super PAC groups mirror the Obama campaign’s larger message days before the filing deadline for the first-quarter financial reports.

John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, penned a fundraising e-mail to Obama supporters saying that the president could well be “swift boated” just like he was in his campaign.

“I know all too clearly that these guys will do or say anything to win. They’ll stop at nothing,” Kerry wrote, mentioning a $3-million donation to a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC by one of the same men who helped bankroll the “Swift Boat Veterans For Truth” campaign against him eight years ago.

“But forewarned is forearmed. Their multimillion-dollar smear tactics were new in 2004; in 2012 we know their playbook, and shame on us if we don’t tear it into shreds. Join me and we will stop the ‘swift boating’ of President Obama,” Kerry said.

All campaigns are particularly trying to build support from small donors. Romney’s campaign emailed its supporters in hopes of surpassing 300,000 “grass roots” donors who have given $250 or less. The Obama campaign says it has more than 1.5 million donors, 98% of whom have given $250 or less.

The president will headline four fundraisers for his campaign Friday, two each in Vermont and Maine.

Original source: Joe Biden: GOP candidates won’t beat Obama