I’m voting for Joe Biden in the primary election. After a couple of comments that I made in a different diary, some folks mentioned that it would be nice to see a diary from a Joe Biden supporter outlining reasons for that support.
I’m not writing this with the intent of engaging in debate about the points below. I have read a lot of diaries and know that for each position, there are good counterarguments that have been made and argued in many diaries. So consider this more informational, and forgive me if I don’t engage in debating these positions with you in the comments below.
1. Executive Experience. Joe Biden was elbow-to-elbow with President Obama through 8 years of his presidency, all the while receiving the reports, intelligence and other data needed to immediately step into the role of president if needed. They spent countless hours in the Situation Room, Cabinet meetings, Oval Office meetings on legislation and all of other things a president does. In my view none of the other Democrats has anywhere near this amount of experience in doing the actual things a president does or responding to crises from the position of a president.
2. Moderate Positions. Labels can be counterproductive, but if I was to label myself it would be as a moderate Democrat. More importantly, I believe moderate approaches have a higher chance of working than more extreme approaches.
I’ll share thoughts on health care as an example. My high-level belief is that health care is a right and not a privilege, that everyone in America should have access to health care, and that the cost of health care for those who can’t afford it should be borne by those who have more money.
With that being said, I’m against Medicare for All because I think it won’t work. I remember the ACA fight, when Democrats controlled both chambers and the White House, with the most charismatic president in a generation spending all of the political capital he had, and we still couldn’t get a public option. I don’t believe that things have changed so much that the public would now support the actual banning of private health insurance in favor of a government run system. I think support for Medicare for All and similarly audacious goals largely emanates from a misconstruction of the effect of the racism and other bigotry coming from the Trump administration. The logic is something like, “Trump is a racist, a xenophobe and a bigot, so Americans want to ban private health insurance.” While Trump is in fact a racist, xenophobe and bigot, it doesn’t make sense to me that the majority of people react to Trump’s bigotry with a sudden keenness for prohibiting private health insurance. I think for most of them (myself included), their underlying political positions on core issues like healthcare haven’t changed much. They just want a president who isn’t hateful and doesn’t stoke hate as a political tool.
People keep framing this area, incorrectly I think, as a fruitless effort to “win over Trump voters.” I would term it more as an effort to “keep Hillary voters.”
Joe Biden wants to strengthen the ACA, finally create a public option, reduce maximum out-of-pocket costs for exchange plans to 8.5%, and significantly expand Medicaid coverage for lower income people. I think achieving any of these will be a big fight, but that success is possible and if all of these goals are achieved there would be a workable healthcare solution for nearly all Americans. I think that if the fight focuses first on Medicare for All, it would fail and that failure would be a distraction that would likely stifle any momentum for subsequently improving the ACA in the ways Biden proposes.
BTW, there isn’t anything inherently evil about the concept of a private health insurance company participating in the healthcare system and earning a profit, if appropriate controls are in place. Did you know that the vast majority of Medicare’s work is performed by private health insurers under contract with Medicare? Our government couldn’t run Medicare on its own.
3. Compromise. I haven’t lost faith that, eventually, Democrats and Republicans can work together again to strike compromises that achieve a general consensus, and I think Biden has the best chance of doing this based on his experience in the Senate and as Vice President and his willingness to engage with the other side. I reject the notion that polarization, bigotry or other causes have permanently made this impossible. I think a position that the left and right are in a state of permanent conflict in which no agreement is possible and one side or the other must achieve total victory on each issue can only be held by someone who isn’t cognizant of American history. There are countless of examples of things getting really bad and then getting better. The Civil War, the shootings in Haymarket Square, Sumner being almost beaten to death with a cane on the Senate floor. The simple fact is that our system is designed to work on compromise. Pie-in-the-sky thinking like “let’s eliminate the Senate!!” won’t get us anywhere. That means that a workable solution would have aspects we like and aspects we don’t like, in which we engage with some people we don’t like, which is the result our system was designed to obtain. Biden fully embraces this reality in a way that the other candidates don’t.
4. He’s Lived Through the Death of Children. This isn’t something I would wish on my worst enemy, but it’s happened to Joe Biden. In every presidency, the president needs to make the decision about whether to send somebody else’s children to war, knowing that some of them will die. The fact that Biden has experienced the death of a child make me believe that he will be more careful in this regard, knowing what a parent feels when they hear that their son or daughter won’t be coming home.
5. He’s a Fundamentally Good Person. I’ve felt a connection to Joe Biden that I haven’t felt with other candidates. When he says he cares about something, I believe him. I love his gaffes, they serve as constant reminders that he’s speaking from the heart and honestly communicating his feelings, not just regurgitating the latest “on message” point crafted by paid advisers. I also have about a 10-year expiration date on political positions, because America, the American people and every politician changes. Nothing Joe Biden did more than 10 years ago really registers with me as worthy of focus.
6. Peer Pressure. I live in Ohio, in an area that leans to the Democrats. I would say 85% of the people I spend time with at work, at social events and other places are Democrats. Of that 85%, I would say about 70% of them support Biden, and feel that Sanders, Warren and to a lesser extent the other candidates are either too extreme or too impractical. If this doesn’t mesh with what you’ve been hearing in your own circle, consider this your on-the-ground report from the Midwest Heartland.
So there you have it. If you are not a fellow Biden supporter, then I wish your candidate the best of luck (and he or she would certainly have my vote in the general election, if that’s how it ends up).