Biden Time in New Hampshire

ABC News’ Jake Tapper Reports: With Senate Democrats unable Tuesday to unite behind the proposal of Sens. Joe Biden, D-Dela., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., to revoke the 2002 war authorization and enact a new authorization with a more narrowly defined mission, it seemed odd to a lot of senators that Biden himself did not attend the weekly meeting of his colleagues to pitch his own plan.

Democratic leaders had hoped the weekly Democratic caucus lunch would end with the 51-member caucus rallying around the Biden/Levin proposal.

That, by all accounts, did not happen.  And while no one argues Biden would have pep-talked the group into a united front, his absence was certainly noted.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said to have been keen on the idea last week, seemed to indicate Tuesday afternoon that he may have lost some enthusiasm for the proposal, telling ABC News that he didn’t care what Iraq proposal Democrats supported as long as it was one he could get as many colleagues as possible to support it.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. — one of the key moderates Biden will need to win over for his bill to even come up for debate — told reporters after the caucus meeting he didn’t know any details about Biden’s proposal, so he couldn’t answer as to whether he supported it or not.

In the gentleman’s club that is the U.S. Senate, no senator would speak ill of the Foreign Relations Committee Chairman for attribution, but Democratic aides noted that Biden had an op-ed pushing his plan in Tuesday’s Boston Globe — the newspaper with the widest circulation in first-in-the-nation primary state New Hampshire.

Biden, in fact, was scheduled to spent Tuesday evening meeting with students at  Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, and campaign in the critical state again Wednesday.