The Case For Biden

In the inquiry into who would be the strongest Democratic Presidential nominee in 2020, Donald Trump is what might be called a hostile witness. “Joe Biden is a dummy,” the President said last week, on his way to Iowa, where Biden, who spent more than three decades in the Senate and eight years as Barack Obama’s Vice-President and one of his closest advisers, was campaigning. Trump added, “I call him One Per Cent Joe,” although Biden is now averaging thirty-two per cent in recent polls, putting him in the lead in a crowded primary field. Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll indicated that Biden would defeat the President in a nationwide head-to-head contest by fifty-three per cent to forty—“landslide proportions,” a Quinnipiac representative noted.

Polls mean only so much at this point, of course; last week, the Democratic National Committee announced that twenty candidates had qualified for the first debates, to be held on June 26th and 27th, in Miami. Biden will appear on the second night, along with Senator Bernie Sanders, who offers an ideological alternative to Biden’s moderation; Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Indiana, who offers a differing perspective and temperament; and Senator Kamala Harris, who, among other things, is a reminder that the Democratic choice need not be a white man. Biden is not, by any reckoning, the inevitable nominee. But, in the light of the preview that voters in Iowa got last week, it’s worth imagining what a race between Biden and Trump might look like, if it comes to that.

Even the similarities between the two men are revealing. They are almost the same age, so, naturally, Trump, who is seventy-three, derides Biden, who is seventy-six, for being old. (“He’s even slower than he used to be.”) But they have used their years very differently. Biden was elected to the Senate at the age of twenty-nine, and has spent his career in public service. He said in Iowa, “I had the dubious distinction of being listed as the poorest man in Congress”—actually, the Senate—a contrast to Trump’s far more dubious claims about exactly how many billions of dollars he has. Money is a poor proxy for public-spiritedness, just as age is an imperfect one for passion. In Iowa, Trump asked a crowd whether his slogan should be “Make America Great Again” or “Keep America Great”—he worried that the acronym for the latter, KAG, didn’t have the right ring. Biden said that the word that summed up America for him was “possibilities.”

Both men have a reputation for being undisciplined speakers, in ways that expose their characters—a meandering exuberance on Biden’s part, casual cruelty on Trump’s. Biden might be called a bore, but never a bully, although, in Iowa, he demonstrated that he can effectively portray Trump as a crank. He lampooned Trump’s assertions that seasonal cold weather disproved climate-change science. (Biden has long advocated actions to address climate change, and has integrated into his pitch elements of the Green New Deal pushed by his younger colleagues.) At an event in Davenport, where he was introduced by a firefighter, Biden mocked Trump’s statement that the California wildfires last year could have been prevented with a little tidying of the forest floor. Twenty minutes later, near Des Moines, Trump repeated the claim, in a defensive tone, saying that he had been praised for his insight by someone from a “forest nation.”

Biden clearly has Trump’s attention. Indeed, he seems to rattle him the most when he connects to the kinds of voters who Trump believes owe him their loyalty, such as white men and women in uniform or in blue-collar jobs. If they vote for Biden, they could swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which Trump won only narrowly in 2016. Last month, after the International Association of Fire Fighters endorsed Biden, Trump tweeted angrily, “I’ve done more for Firefighters than this dues sucking union will ever do, and I get paid ZERO!” It wasn’t clear what he had done for the firefighters, or why they should pay him anything. Are they supposed to book rooms in the Trump International Hotel?

Other candidates could win over those voters, too—and energize a whole range of constituencies. Biden, during his long career, has been associated with policies and behaviors that will likely pose problems for him in the primaries: the 1994 crime bill, the 2005 bankruptcy bill (a point of contention with Elizabeth Warren), excessive hugging, and his handling, in 1991, as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, at which Anita Hill testified that Thomas had harassed her. Earlier this month, after reiterating his support for the Hyde Amendment, which bars most federal funding of abortion, he abandoned it, citing the proliferation of restrictive state laws. (His position on abortion has been pro-choice but nuanced, and the same is true of a majority of general-election voters.) Trump, meanwhile, has boasted of groping women and says he is determined to help overturn Roe v. Wade. Last Thursday, in an interview with NBC, Hill was asked if she saw any “moral equivalency” between Biden and Trump. “Absolutely not,” she said. Could she vote for Biden, if he were the nominee? “Of course I could.”

Trump will almost certainly be his party’s nominee; his only challenger so far is Bill Weld, the moderate former governor of Massachusetts. The President will formally kick off his reëlection campaign on Tuesday, at a rally in Orlando. As part of the launch, he gave George Stephanopoulos an interview in the Oval Office. He said that, if a foreign government came to him with dirt on an opponent, he’d be happy to take a look at it—wouldn’t anybody? No matter who the Democratic nominee is, the sordidness of Trump’s tactics, like the crudeness of his invective, is a given. Trump, Biden warned, has removed “the guardrails” from American politics.

Trump, for his part, is pushing the view that Biden is played out in every sense—and was never really a player. “Obama took him off the trash heap,” Trump said last week. That particular slur might get at the heart of their rivalry. For some voters, a Biden Presidency would be a vindication of the Obama era; for others, a sign that some of its promise, particularly regarding a generational and cultural transformation in politics, has not been realized. But for Trump, who has devoted himself to erasing Obama’s legacy, it would be a sour repudiation. Joe Biden is not the only Democrat who can enrage Trump. But enrage him he does.

For several years I had a regular lunch date with an Iranian diplomat — I suspect his real profession was otherwise — who worked out of the Islamic Republic’s mission to the United Nations.

Our conversations, always on background, were exceptionally candid. He almost surely sought me out because my pro-Israel stance represented, in the view of the regime he served, the core beliefs of Zionist-occupied Washington. In turn, I got a crisply articulated sense of Iran’s strategic thinking along with invitations to meet with various Iranian leaders, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

We detested each other’s ideas, distrusted each other’s motives and enjoyed each other’s company. I was sorry when he returned to Tehran.

Aristotle had a term for our relationship. He called it a “friendship of utility” — adventitious, opportunistic and usually short-lived. It’s the same type of relationship that Joe Biden appears to have had with James Eastland and Herman Talmadge, two long-deceased segregationist senators, early in his own political career, when he was a junior member from Delaware.

Eastland and Talmadge were Democrats in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Biden had no choice but to have relationships with them, not least because he had to plead for committee assignments. At a fund-raiser on Tuesday, the former vice president recalled, “We didn’t agree on much of anything,” and said of Talmadge that he was “one of the meanest guys I ever knew.”

Nevertheless, Biden added, “At least there was some civility. We got things done.”

Cue the histrionics of Biden’s primary rivals, the hysteria from parts of the progressive base and the inevitable media pile-on. The same people who think it’s a good idea to maintain an open line to foreign enemies apparently now believe it’s appalling for Biden to have observed collegial norms with fellow Democrats. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates went so far as to call it “a secondary endorsement, as crazy as it sounds, of Jim Crow,” on the theory that Biden’s civility meant making his peace with a racist system.

In fact, Biden made no such peace; all the landmark civil-rights legislation was passed well before he arrived in the Senate in 1973. He simply dealt with the Congress as he found it and looked for opportunities to be constructive and consequential rather than destructive and obnoxious. That is now his brand as a presidential candidate, and it’s what his critics find so objectionable: How dare he try to work with his opponents instead of seeking to shun or annihilate them?

These same critics have also ripped Biden for saying a kind word about Mike Pence and Michigan Republican Fred Upton (the latter for advancing legislation for treatment of pediatric cancer). The goal isn’t simply to discredit Biden as generationally out-of-touch or too politically clubby or insufficiently transformational or otherwise gaffe-prone. It’s to rid the party of compromisers of any sort — that is, to purge the Democratic Party of its democratic instincts.

All of this is evidence of what psychologist Pamela Paresky calls the “apocalyptic” approach to politics that increasingly typifies today’s progressivism. “It is an apocalyptic view, not a liberal one, that rejects redemption and forgiveness in favor of condemnation and excommunication,” she writes in Psychology Today. “It is an apocalyptic perspective, not a liberal one, that sees the world as needing to be destroyed and replaced rather than improved and perfected.”

Paresky contrasts that to what’s been called the “prophetic culture” in American politics, which takes human nature as it is and gladly goes to work with its crooked timber. Abraham Lincoln was a part of this prophetic culture, as was Martin Luther King Jr. John Brown was part of the apocalyptic one — as is, in its way, the new “cancel culture” of the left.

The irony here is that the left’s apocalyptic tendencies have everything in common with the behavior of the Trumpian right: the smash-mouth partisanship; the loathing for moderates on its own side; the conviction that its opponents are unbelievably stupid as well as irredeemably evil; the belief that the only political victories worth gaining are total ones.

Above all, it shares the same disdain for comity, civility and ordinary decency. It’s the politics of the clenched right fist and the permanently raised left middle finger.

To his credit, Biden has refused to apologize for his remarks (at least as of this writing) and he’d be a fool to do so. The aim of those demanding he apologize isn’t to see him redeemed. It’s to watch him capitulate, and, in so doing, seize the right to declare who’s morally fit to be in the party, and who isn’t.

In other words, they want to be the excommunicators. Biden shouldn’t let them. Civility is never a vice among fellow citizens, especially when it’s in short supply. The last thing Democrats need is to allow the nasty left do to them in 2020 what the nasty right did to Republicans in 2016.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Club for Growth, a conservative political group, will launch new attack ads against Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden targeting his past statements about race that will run during his first debate appearance next week.

The decision by Club for Growth to attack Biden is based on internal polling the organization conducted that was viewed exclusively by Reuters. The ad will air on MSNBC and NBC stations in Des Moines, Iowa, according to the organization.

Iowa holds the nation’s first nominating contest.

Club for Growth, whose stated top policy goals include reducing income tax rates, a full repeal of Obamacare and reducing the size of the federal government, will never back a Democrat for president, but it is wading into the Democratic primary likely because Biden poses the greatest risk to Republican President Donald Trump’s reelection bid. Early national polling and surveys in important swing states have repeatedly shown Biden besting Trump in a hypothetical match up.

Club for Growth’s poll found voters are less inclined to vote for Biden if they were told he previously had taken positions that include opposing slavery reparations and busing of school children as part of desegregation systems.

“Joe Biden’s past statements and positions on race issues present a serious challenge to his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination according to our polling,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in a statement to Reuters.

“This poll and the coming ad are designed to help voters and observers of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary understand the field as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden.”

Biden, who has consistently been the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary, drew sharp criticism from his Democratic rivals this week when he pointed to the “civility” during his early time in the U.S. Senate in the 1970s when he worked with segregationists. Biden has refused to apologize, pointing out that he opposed segregationists.

Biden is one of two dozen Democrats vying to challenge Trump in the November 2020 election. The Democrats will go head-to-head in Miami next week in their first debate.

The Club for Growth poll - which included 1,000 voters in the 18 states that are the first to hold primary contests - reaffirmed Biden’s position as a frontrunner. It found, like other polls, that Biden’s lead is being fueled largely by black voters. The poll found 46% of black voters, 29% of Hispanic voters and 33% white voters are backing Biden.

The poll found Biden followed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and then Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The poll also looked more closely at the four states that conduct the first nominating contests: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. In those states Biden leads, but Warren edges out Sanders - a possible sign of her growing support in states that are pivotal for the primary contest.

The poll was conducted June 10-13 by Republican polling firm WPAi Intelligence.

Most candidates for the Democratic nomination are struggling to be noticed in a crowded field. Elizabeth Warren details policy proposals. Bernie Sanders rails against the establishment. Beto O’Rourke stands on tables and flails his arms.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has not had to do a lot to garner attention. The career politician and former vice president has a big enough and successful enough brand that he was guaranteed to be the favorite merely by existing. American liberals love to soak in a warm bath of nostalgia for the innocent, pre-Trump Obama era, and if they cannot have Barack back, Joe is the next best thing.

Alone among the candidates, Biden could be locked in a cupboard for 23 hours a day, brought out to condemn Trump and say nice words like ‘progress’, be reimprisoned and still triumph. Perhaps his staffers wish they could establish this routine.

Biden is a curiously traditional sort of Democrat. The liberal trend leftwards, embodied in the prominence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar, appears to have passed him by. This is true on economics. Biden held a fundraiser last week at which he reassured the billionaires present:

‘You all are going to do fine, and you deserve to do fine because you’ve broken your necks, and you’ve done well, and you’ve earned what you’ve got…’

It is hard to imagine Bernie Sanders planting such enthusiastic kisses on the ample backsides of the 1 percent.

What could be more damaging for Biden’s campaign is how stubbornly unwoke he is. Of course, he is a liberal – pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-gay marriage et cetera – but he does not seem to have grasped the rules of fashionably intersectional social and rhetorical etiquette. He keeps putting his foot in it, with almost refreshingly uncalculated carelessness. This might not be a problem for the average Democrat voter but it is for the average progressive journalist, and their ill-feeling towards his campaign has mounted with each mini-scandal.

First, Biden is handsy. His hugging, shoulder-rubbing and head-patting creeps out people to the right, never mind people with #TimesUp pins. At the start of his campaign his strategists should have sat him and said, ‘Whatever you do, stop being weird around women and kids.’ Perhaps they did, but it was futile if so. As soon as he saw a 10-year-old girl – bam – he planted his hands on her shoulders and said, ‘I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking.’ Sure, this is not in itself a very gross thing to do, but with his record of boundary-hopping it was foolish at best.

Then there is the race issue. Biden entered politics in the 1960s, when desegregation was a contentious issue. He supported desegregation, naturally, but opposed ‘busing’, or the transportation of black and white children to different schools to increase their multi-racial mix. There were many different reasons to oppose busing, but to modern progressives Biden’s stance makes him look soft on racism.

Worse, for them, was Biden’s significance in promoting tough measures against crime in the Eighties and Nineties. For sure, Republicans like Charlie Kirk who opportunistically use this Biden’s past to smear him as some kind of racist are being ridiculous given that he was reacting against enormous rates of murder and rape – but progressives blame him for his role in establishing America’s sky-high rates of incarceration.

Of course, Biden was also the right hand man of America’s first black president, but, still, you might expect him to be warned not to say anything dubious about race which could offend the sensitivities of hot-tempered progressives. Bam. Out of nowhere, Biden decided to pay tribute to segregationists. It would have irritated liberals enough that Biden was singing the virtues of civility when most of them think nothing less than howls out outrage are a suitable response to the Age of Trump, but to use as an example his collaborative work with segregationist senators like Herman Talmadge is hilariously tin-eared. Doubling down and demanding an apology from fellow Democrat candidate Cory Booker for criticizing him must have made his staffers gaze longingly towards the cupboard door.

The irony is that Biden is the safe candidate for the Democratic machine. Someone like Bernie Sanders would be hard to control – and must insult those precious billionaire donors – and Biden can be trusted not to veer too far left. When it comes to public relations, though, it is obvious that Biden cannot be trusted at all. I imagine that every time he meets a pretty woman his staffers freeze in panic at the thought that this might be the day he decides to give someone a pat on the ass. I imagine that every time he meets African Americans his staffers cross their fingers and offer up silent prayers in fear of him off-handedly saying something positive about George Wallace.

Mainstream left-wing commentators are still tolerating Biden as the candidate most likely to beat Donald Trump, but you can sense their exasperation. ‘Bless your heart, Joe Biden,’ says Ian Millhiser of Think Progress in what is somehow an eye-roll in text form. ‘Really, Joe Biden? REALLY?’ seethes the Daily Kos with less restraint. Biden is still the favorite but if his staffers want to make sure that he does not drop a verbal nuke on his campaign they should think about the cupboard trick. It can be a big one, with water and snacks. They just have to make sure that it is sound-proofed

In fact I don’t think any of the American men being presented now are able to do what needs to be done and make it work. I think it will take a hard woman who can stand to finish that painful job. This is a family in chaos and the future is not clear. Very special talents are needed and then tend not to be male talents.

That’s only ‘sexist’ if you really believe that toxic masculinity, macho chest thumping and paternalistic arrogance really haven’t hurt our country.

Feels a little defensive and fragile.

Well, the thing is, even women vote for those guys. I remember on Abuzz when Tom Daschle was getting flak from women because he wore a pink ******* shirt. The key is not to support males who exhibit machismo mentality. And don't support similarly-minded females like Thatcher, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Sara Palin, Schlaffly, either. There have been plenty of decent men who've led without resorting to that stereotype — George Mitchell, for instance.

If it's not "all men" then there's no reason to insist that a woman do the job. Just choose the best person.

Very special talents are needed and then tend not to be male talents.

I happen to think that more female leadership could be a very positive part of the change we HAVE to undergo. That's only 'sexist' if you really believe that toxic masculinity, macho chest thumping and paternalistic arrogance really haven't hurt our country.

No one is “insisting a woman do the job”.

I think it will take a hard woman who can stand to finish that painful job.

And men don’t “resort to that stereotype” as if it’s a choice they can turn on and off.

I think that, from the candidates running, a woman is the best choice.

And I think that being a woman would be a feature, not a defect.

While there's a genetic propensity for toxic machismo in some (maybe most?) men, it can be overcome through the process of enculturation.