There are people who instill excitement and passion in people. There are leaders who know exactly how to turn a phrase to get people to follow them, to line up to hear them talk, and to crowd into buildings for a glimpse of them. There are leaders who say dramatic, exciting, and sometimes controversial things to fire up their audiences.
Joe Biden is not one of those people. And for some Democrats, that made him a disappointing candidate.
However, this very thing is what will make Biden a great president.
The country doesn’t need excitement right now. We have had our fill of being worked up. What we need in a president is someone who brings a calm and steady hand and doesn’t talk in a way designed to install passion in one side (and hate in the other).
Biden will be a steady hand that knows Washington. He will bring people together without drama to get things done that will actually help us.
Joe Biden is just the right man for this moment.
from Ezra Klein of Vox:
After the 2016 election, panicked, wounded Democrats settled on a diagnosis. Trump, for all his mania, bigotry, and chaos, had given angry Americans something to vote for. To stop him, Democrats would need to match force with counter-force, polarization with mobilization. They would need to show as much anger, as much populism, as much wrecking ball energy as he did.
But this is not what we got in Joe.
Joe Biden has never been a polarizing figure. He has spent his career trying to bring people together…. Biden doesn’t try to win Twitter with brutal burns, or dominate the news cycle with controversial statements (though he occasionally does so with gaffes). He’s not widely loved, but he’s significantly less loathed than Trump.
Biden is a steady hand that can get things done. He won’t give us the statements we want on the hot button issues (that wouldn’t help him win and it just isn’t him) but he is going to use his steady hand to get very real results.
In fact, what Biden is doing is genius: he is planning actions that will actually help us while refusing to classify them in ways that will get people worked up (either in good or bad ways)
The 100-plus page Sanders-Biden task force recommendations moved the substance of Biden’s agenda significantly to the left without tying Biden to any of the lightning rod issues that animate cable news conflict.
“On the big issues — the stuff voters will notice — he doesn’t want to be seen as particularly polarizing or divisive,” says political scientist Seth Masket, who is completing a book on the lessons Democrats learned from 2016. “But while your average voter won’t pay much attention to the more technical policy concessions, they turn out to have a lot of meaning behind them, and the Democratic activists you want working for your campaign and staffing your organization notice them.”
So Biden is smart enough to not say things that would be seen as extreme and rile up the other side, while making actual policy decisions that will really help America.
I can’t over emphasize how smart this is. Study after study show that the vast majority of Americans actually support the nitty-gritty of Democratic policies even if they are scared of the labels behind them.
So what Biden is doing is brilliant. He is depriving the Rs of the chance to label him with the names of those policies, allowing voters in the middle to feel comfortable working with him, and yet actually doing the things necessary to make America stronger and better.
Biden’s steady hand and lack of comfort with drama will make him a great president.
Ironically, this lack of excitement is also making him a better candidate:
He’s slicing into Trump’s coalition, pulling back the older, whiter voters Democrats lost in 2016. The Biden campaign’s insight is that mobilization is often the flip side of polarization: When party activists are sharply divided by ideology and demography, what excites your side will be the very thing that unnerves the other side. Studies of House elections show this dynamic in action: Ideologically extreme candidates perform worse than moderates because they drive up turnout on the other side.
It’s a campaign that frustrates liberal activists and pundits because it repeatedly, routinely denies them the excitement and collisions that structure modern politics. It’s also, for that reason, a campaign that is frustrating Trump and Fox News, which is why they keep trying to run against Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar instead.
This is the moment for a president Biden
“I won in 2016 and held the district in 2018 by being someone in Congress who isn’t on cable news having had my head explode all the time,” says Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL). “And I think Joe Biden understands that. A steady hand is appreciated and valued against the chaos of the last few years.”
Joe Biden offers us a steady hand in unsteady times.
Joe Biden will be a great president.
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want to donate to help Biden win?
This is day 16 in my series 100 Days of Loving Joe Biden
Did you miss any of the 100 days? Here they are:
Day 1: Biden’s Tax Plan
Day 2: Biden and Gay Marriage
Day 3: Biden’s FDR Sized presidency
Day 4: Biden is a mensch
Day 5: Biden has a Covid-19 plan
Day 6: Biden ran the Obama economic recovery
Day 7: Biden’s Housing Plan
Day 8: Biden knows love and commitment
Day 9: Biden knows exactly who Republicans are
Day 10: Biden understands America
Day 11: Biden will be a Trojan horse for Warren/Sanders
Day 12: Biden has felt pain and found empathy
Day 13: Biden and the Violence Against Women Act
Day 14: Biden was endorsed by John Lewis
Day 15: Biden will protect teacher’s unions
You can also find the 100 days of loving Biden on Twitter at this link. Follow and retweet! The Twitter feed is new and I could use all the support I can get ❤️
