Joe Biden

And now, I finally look at Joseph Robinette Biden, the only Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 that I haven't assessed yet. 

Joe Biden is likely running his last campaign for the Presidency  . . . even if he's elected.  (More about that later.)  When you look at his record, there is some stuff to criticize - his support of a punitive crime bill, his mishandling of the Clarence Thomas hearings, and his old-school position on marijuana, among other things.  But the characterization of Biden as an out-of-touch white male centrist is probably one of the biggest smear jobs I've ever seen.  Overall, he has a record that solidly puts him in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.  So why is he constantly labeled a centrist by his detractors, and what makes them dislike him so powerfully?

Part of it has to do with a world that is very different from the late eighties, when Biden's positions were as far to the left as anyone would go at the time.  Today he is characterized as a moderate Democrat mainly because he doesn't support expanding Medicare to include everyone, and he hasn't gone toward free college, as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have done.  But in 1987, he was probably liberal enough that Republican operative Lee Atwater would have pulled some dirty trick against him to sabotage his presidential campaign if an aide on the Michael Dukakis campaign hadn't pulled one first - the plagiarism videotape showing Biden lifting words from a British politician who had a similar background to describe his own life.  (Dukakis, honorable man that he is, fired the aide because he didn't want to run a dirty campaign.)  To suggest that Biden is a centrist today when he was considered a liberal in 1987 is to suggest that he's changed.  He hasn't.  A new generation of Democrats has simply gone farther on social and civil rights issues, which has caused Biden some trouble in explaining his mishandling of the Thomas hearings - thanks largely in part to his and others' inexperience in handling sexual harassment, a relatively new issue in 1991 - or the punitive 1994 crime bill, which in retrospect looks rather harsh until you remember the level of violent crime in the late eighties and early nineties.

On the other hand, Biden didn't just support the Violence Against Women Act; he wrote it.  Long before anyone suggested a Green New Deal that included expanding mass transit, Biden was and remains a staunch mass transit supporter.  He's not only an Amtrak supporter, he's also an Amtrak  rider.  Moderates are supposed to like fiscal restraint, but, as Vice President, Biden supported deficit spending for fiscal stimulus in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act when President Obama advocated it.  Biden has also supported action on climate change, co-sponsoring a pollution reduction bill co-written by none other than Bernie Sanders.

The complaints against Biden have largely been about his gaffes (he's somewhat inarticulate and speaks before he thinks, but he's also affected by a stutter), his age (weird that some of the people who think he's too old support the older Bernie Sanders), and, let's face it, his blandness (boring white guy).  But no one can argue that Biden is an indecent man.  He connects with ordinary people because he came from a modest middle-class background himself.  He doesn't have to feel people's pain because he's experienced pain himself, such as the loss of his first wife and his daughter in a car crash and also the loss of his son Beau to brain cancer, as well as his own bout with an aneurysm requiring surgery.  He has lived his life in public and has demonstrated awkwardness that a lot of Americans exhibit and relate to.  He's authentic.  And you have a problem with him just because he uses old-school expressions like "Come on, man"? 

There's some resentment toward Biden because he's running for a presidential nomination many suspect he thought could have been his in 2016 if Hillary Clinton hadn't run with the backing of a party that had anointed her as Barack Obama's successor as far back as January 21, 2009, and so the charge is that he feels a sense of entitlement.  (No, that was Beto O'Rourke.)  Biden, of course, isn't entitled to the Democratic presidential nomination any more than Hillary Clinton was.  In fact, if Beau Biden hadn't died in 2015, Joe Biden probably would still have been discouraged from running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, as all of the "Ready For Hillary" bumper stickers that began showing up on Subaru Outbacks almost as soon as Obama was sworn in to a second term demonstrated.  Biden, like Hillary Clinton, may feel that he should be the nominee because of his seniority and his standing in the party, but he differs from her in this way.  He knows he isn't going to get the nomination handed to him on a silver platter, like Hillary did, and he knows he has to earn it - and the polls and the stiff competition from other candidates have long since made that clear to him. He keeps stumbling, he keeps making verbal mistakes, and he seems unsure.  But he has the ability to to a good job as President, and he keeps trying as a candidate.  He's one of those guys who's better at serving in office than running for office.  

So why elect a man who just turned 77 and ought to be considering writing a memoir rather than an inaugural address?  I think I already explained on this blog the political situation in These States.  We need someone in the White House who's left of center but not too far left.  Biden may be a liberal, but he's not a social democratic progressive like Sanders and Warren, and he isn't even a pragmatic progressive like Martin O'Malley.  Any one of those candidates could have taken the country into a more liberal direction and made the United States more like France or Denmark had they been elected President in 2016, because Obama gave them a sound platform on which to build with his own accomplishments, however modest they were.  Not so in 2020, thanks to Trump having taken us so far backward from where we were in 2016 that it will take us at least four years to undo the damage he's caused before we can pursue a European-style progressive utopia.  (As a pragmatist, O'Malley might have been able to win in 2020, but certainly not Warren or Sanders.)  We need a President who can get us back to where we were when Trump came to power, and as an old-school Democrat, Biden is a (not the) man who can do it.  Also, because his age, he is likely to serve one presidential term voluntarily and step down in favor of a younger Democratic nominee in 2024 who can take the country farther toward a progressive future.  Biden would be a perfect caretaker President, someone who won't be there too long and someone who can leave the country for the 47th President of the United States to lead a more progressive future in time for this country's 250th birthday.  

This blog entry is not an endorsement of Biden.  Other candidates are up to the task of restoring America back to the way it was before Trump, and should any one of them win in 2020 and then win re-election in 2024, he or she could still point the country in a more progressive direction.  I merely note that Biden should not be counted out, he is a decent man, and he would be a good - if not perfect - fit for the Presidency, and he could be the right man for the right time.  So could someone else.  But let's not dismiss Biden out of hand.  The arguments for doing so are mean-spirited and ill-informed.  I know these comments won't be popular with everyone - among my more progressive friends, they won't be popular with anyone - but this is my measure of the man, and I'm standing by it.

Right.  I'm done assessing the Democratic presidential candidates for 2020.  Now I hope Eric Holder or Terry McAuliffe doesn't get into the "race," because I've had enough.