There’s a reason why Joe Biden’s campaign is dramatically limiting their candidate’s public appearances. Because every time he steps out, he steps in it.
Joe Biden belongs to a different era, and yet he is utterly oblivious to it, refusing to ever consider evolving. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the correct position on the Hyde Amendment, but there’s no way to fix this kind of cultural dysfunction. There is a place for this kind of antiquated thinking, but the unindicted co-conspirator has that demographic locked up. Let the other team cling to outmoded sexist tropes, with their utter disregard for treating women like equals.
Biden has universal name ID; his support is maxed. So what is his path to victory? As with Bernie Sanders’ campaign, the goal is to win a bunch of plurality victories in states, head into the convention with just slightly more delegates than the rest (30% is the number cited), and then horse-trade his way to the nomination at a brokered convention (where multiple rounds of votes are held, and candidates trade their delegates for various promises, presumably the VP slot, Cabinet positions, etc). It’s the only path for candidates with zero room to grow—just hold what they have, and hope no one else can consolidate the vote.
While Sanders has a committed group of die-hard supporters to count on, Biden’s support is soft—low-information voters still not plugged into the campaign. It’s the only name of the bunch that most people recognize. As such, odds are strong that this support will erode as people become aware of the myriad other kick-ass options available to them. While the early debates will be a clusterfuck with too many candidates onstage, none of whom will have time to say much of anything, they will serve to inform a whole new segment of people that, Hey, there are other candidates! My theory? They will serve less to allow someone to break out, and more to hurt the high-name-ID leaders (Biden and Sanders). Just a theory, of course …
Anyway, without that hardcore group of support, how will Biden hold on to his current lead, particularly in a political climate that doesn’t quite favor old white men who don’t know how to encourage young girls to be as strong and accomplished as their brothers? He’s banking on Obama nostalgia to carry the day.
Democrats love Barack Obama. Ergo, Biden is the continuation of that legacy. Heck, let’s call it “Obama’s third term.” Except, of course, he’s not Obama. Obama wouldn’t have treated that girl that way. Obama didn’t treat Anita Hill like shit. Obama didn’t oppose school busing during school desegregation. Obama didn’t behave with women as though it was still the 1950s. And, while much was accomplished during the Obama years, much was not.
“You cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that that's good enough,” said Beto O’Rourke on MSNBC. “As much as a horror show as Trump has been ... we had real problems before Donald Trump became president.”
He further added, “You've got to ask yourself where Joe Biden is on the issues that are most important to you. Did he support the war in Iraq that forever destabilized the Middle East? Did he really believe that women of lower incomes should be able to make their own decisions about their own body, to be able to afford health care in order to do that? He supported the Hyde Amendment; he now opposes the Hyde Amendment. I'm not exactly sure what he believes or what he should apologize for. I only know that this country should be able to do far better.” He isn’t wrong.
In a similar vein, Pete Buttigieg has
said that “
it [would not] be honest to promise that we can restore an old order that cannot, in any case, meet the realities of a new moment. Democrats can no more turn the clock back to the 1990s than Republicans can return us to the 1950s.”
Joe Biden is a relic of the past, not because of his age, but because his thinking hasn’t evolved. The fact that he looks at the Democratic Party today, with its new spirit of empowerment—Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Dreamers, the Equality movement—and thinks that
he is the answer America needs proves that he is unable to read the room. And his every action since he began running—from launching his campaign with a fundraiser
hosted by a Comcast lobbyist to the way he treated that little girl—shows that he has no ability to rise to this moment.
* * *
As a palate cleanser, here’s a message Elizabeth Warren recorded for my daughter, Eli, a few years ago:
Eli was so excited about this that she would play that clip for her friends, even before Warren became a presidential candidate. This message matters.