To the second point, it’s semantics. Bernie ran twice late in his career. He was more successful in his first two attempts by a large margin compared to Biden who fell on his face in his initial runs. He also didn’t chase the Presidency his whole career. He waited until he was an established Senator. He waited for an election where he tried to get someone else to run and they didn’t. Then he finally went in and he caught fire. Then 4 years later he had a justifiable amount of support to merit a run before he became too old (he’s in the ballpark of every single top contender age wise Biden/Trump/Bloomberg/Warren).
So it’s just disengenous to paint him as someone who is compulsively going for the big office. Especially when the last few Democratic candidates were
Biden: who ran multiple times far less successfully over his career and clearly aspired to that office for nearly all of it.
-Hillary Clinton who the minute she became a Senator, everyone knew was going to go for the Presidency someday. Was expecting a coronation in 08 and three the party into chaos and threatened a super delegate take over where they had to have emergency meetings to get her to back down. Then who pretty much the entire Obama administration, was almost seen as a foregone conclusion to run again and be the favorite, and it was so obvious that nobody wanted to run against her in the party
-Obama who was a Jr Senator who got notoriety for a speech he gave in 06 and ran the very first chance he got.
I don’t know you say compared to any of them that the guy who had been in Congress since the HW Bush administration and didn’t run for a quarter of a century and only did so because the person they tried to get to run refused and it was a safe environment to push his platform is the person chasing glory. Even with him running a second time it was one cycle later at the peak of his popularity where he demonstrated that he did well in areas a Democrat’s struggled, polled well in favorables, showed the ability to raise huge amounts of money, and had high levels of enthusiasm. That’s a merited reason to run.
It’s just a smear that ignores any historical perspective. Not that the person posting it had any