After a very long courtship, Joe Biden has decided to commit. For the third time, the former senator and VP will run for president.
The core values of this nation… our standing in the world… our very democracy…everything that has made America — America –is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. #Joe2020 https://t.co/jzaQbyTEz3
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 25, 2019
This will be Biden’s third run for president. His first try came in 1988, ending amid plagiarism revelations. In 2008, Biden failed to gain any traction in the primary, but Obama did choose him as a running mate, bringing international experience from his time leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, something the junior senator from Illinois lacked. Their unlikely pairing ended up building a famous friendship, and the two enjoyed a good rapport and working relationship while in the White House and after, referring to each other as a “brother.”
Biden’s four-decade tenure in the Senate will also come under a microscope. The Washington Post recently examined his opposition to busing in 1975 as schools were struggling to desegregate and found that he suggested that the government’s role in integration should be limited.
He has pushed for legislation to lengthen criminal drug sentences, which overwhelmingly affected minorities and have been revisited lately in new criminal justice reform efforts.
Biden’s handling of confirmation hearings in 1991 for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has also come under new scrutiny in the wake of last year’s controversial confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault. Thomas was accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment, and Biden’s handling of the process as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman has been criticized because of unanswered attacks against Hill and the fact that witnesses were not called who might have supported her story.
All those concerns amid questions about his conduct toward women — and that Biden would be almost 78 on Election Day 2020 and is a white male in a party with younger, more diverse and more progressive presidential candidates — are challenges for Biden’s candidacy, even if many early polls show he is atop the field in large measure because he is so well-known.
I respect Biden, though his record on labor issues is decidedly mixed. He was by all accounts a good Senator and a great Vice President. That said, he needs to step aside. He’s still in the neoliberal camp economically, and that is not what America needs these days. He would better serve as the elder statesman of the party right now, especially since there are many equally qualified, talented, and much younger folks running.Report
Biden is probably my last choice out of the plausible candidates. Some of that is that he’s from a wing of the party that has a lot of policy stances I disagree with, but most of that is, that like Bernie, he’s older than dirt.
Seriously we need a maximum age for people running for President. Maybe 70 or 75.
Same with Congress.Report
He’s got name recognition.
He also has authenticity (defined as unembarrassedly making gaffes).
I’m assuming that, since he’s running, he already has a war chest.Report
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We can have great fun with this “Biden bounces up the polls” or “Biden pounces Trump during debates.” We might be going down the path to fascism but we can rhyme our way there.Report
Biden is not my first choice for the primaries. He might not even be my sixth or seventh choice. FWIW I go between Harris and Warren right now. My general gut prediction is that Harris can be a compromise candidate between the moderate and liberal factions.
But I’ve seen two tweets that explain Biden and the primary dilemma well:
1. Matt Y noted that there are still a lot of older Democrats who are not really being courted by any of the other candidates. Everyone else is going for the 18-50 vote right now. Or maybe 18-Forty something Gen Xer. Biden has a strong base among older Democrats including many African-Americans.
2. Someone whose twitter handle is MenshevikMag tweeted that “Besides Biden himself, Delaware is a vestigial attachment to Maryland’s eastern shore that sustains itself through selling tax free booze to Philly college kids and bank fraud, does anyone think it’s prolific racist grope senator will stand up to scrutiny.”
I don’t know who MenshevikMag is but she seems to be a part of the Very Online to Extremely Online.* I think this group might be large enough to spoil things but they also don’t realize that they are a minority, even in the Democratic Party. The Extremely Online are at least very loud and seem ready for blood. I worry we might see the kind of circular firing squad that lets Trump win a second term with the same losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college freakiness we saw in 2016.Report
The Extremely Online are absolutely certain that the next Democratic candidate must be a woman or a person of color. They are so certain about this that Mayor Pete being a homosexual is not considered enough to allow him to be an exception to this. I’ve even seen arguments that Mayor Pete isn’t really LGBT because he is too conforming to heteronormativity. Very few people really care even among actual Democrats about these things.Report
How many divisions does the EO have? Because they have barely any politicians or electoral constituencies. Even the minorities they profess to support think they’re a bit wacky. The only reason that they get paid attention to at all is because A) conservatives desperately signal boost them and B) the journalists all have an incestuous addiction to twitter which is where the EO squawks carry the furthest.Report
Maybe enough to spoil things? Almost anyone can get traction. Hell, I know someone who gushes over that Oprah spiritual advisor and he grifting for the nomination.Report
The Extremely Online have managed to do a fair bit of damage In non-political contexts as the YA Twitter has proven. They might not get their preferred candidate into office but they could make this really troublesome for everybody.Report
That is a point, and a danger, but this isn’t an election to replace an existing Democratic President; it’s an election to defeat Trump. I am not exactly an old timer but I’ve never seen those kind of purity pony themes carrying much heft when there’s a Republican incumbent to unseat. A EO voter sitting out the election or protest voting because Biden doesn’t check their boxes seems lunatic even by the EO standards of lunacy.Report
The Extremely Online possess the zealot’s belief in their own correctness and righteousness. They are not going to listen to reason because they believe they possess the one true way. Its like the KPD during late Weimar. The intelligent thing for them to do would be vote SPD but they couldn’t do it. They had to just sit things out.Report
Yeah well they don’t have the numbers to swing an election without the people who are vulnerable to purity pony impulses enabling ’em.Report
*Sigh* Well there goes Joe. I really hoped he’d sit it out. Thank God(ess?) for primaries. We’ll see how he fares.Report
The juicy bit is on page 43 of this PDF:
Donald Trump: 34%
Joe Biden: 42%Report
Caveat: polling this far out from the election is virtually worthless.Report
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Something we should all agree on.Report
The poll showing him beating Trump means Biden has all but won the primaries, especially considering the huge sweep through the South early in the season, where he will do very well.
He doesn’t have a prayer in the general, though.Report
Your info is rather badly… out of date. The state line up this primary is very different than last time. For instance Cali, Minnesota and Massachusetts are all voting right after south Carolina.Report
California and Texas are both on March 3. Colorado hasn’t set a final date yet, but will probably be March 3. The Super Tuesday question this time isn’t how will the Dem candidates do with African-Americans, it’s how will they do with Hispanics.Report
That actually may play to his advantage. He’ll do well with Minnesota’s white working class union vote. California coming so early means field will still be huge and fragmented, making it easier to come out on top by holding that centrist lane before those further left can coalesce around a champion.
Obama isn’t endorsing Biden yet, which is very smart because putting his thumb on the scales too early would only piss passionate ____ supporters off, and also needlessly risk endorsing someone who burns out early.Report
That is true. The centrist lane is far less crowded than the liberal one which suits me pretty well. I am utterly baffled by your suggestion that Biden hasn’t a prayer in the General Election. I mean, yeah, he does have a reputation for gaffes and the like but compared to his opponent?? I am personally anxious about Biden because of his age, his handsiness and his propensity for gaffes but those are all dice rolls- not certainties. If he wasn’t so old or so Biden then he’d be a pretty much perfect candidate to beat the orange tar out of Trump.Report
I might worry about gaffes in another timeline.
Of all the reasons to be worried about Uncle Joe, “gaffes” is somewhere near “nowhere” for me.Report
Who would have a prayer in the general?Report
There are a number of “how’s Biden on the War On Drugs?” tweets showing up. They’re all for ending it and very much against Biden’s previous positions. I don’t want to link to sites like “Marijuana Moment” because, well. I prefer more subtle advocates. So here’s the hed and subhed from Rolling Stone:
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The extremely online has been very against Biden because as a white man he does not represent the increasingly diverse Democratic Party. Slate looked at the polls. They show that Biden’s biggest group of supporters tend to be women and people of color. Black women are especially strong in their support for Biden. Among Democratic voters, Biden is least popular among white men.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/joe-biden-polling-bump-boring-strategy.htmlReport