Joe Biden Doesn’t Look So Electable in Person

A column in the New York Times sets out some of my own misgivings about Joe Biden as the potential 2020 Democrat standard bearer.  Part of my concerns comes from remembering Biden's gaffe laden past runs for the the nomination and his seeming inability to ignite true enthusiasm.  Indeed, he reminds me of Bob Dole's ill-fated presidential run from back in 1996 during my days in the Republican Party. Despite a long, positive record, Dole simply never had the ability to spark enthusiasm.  As a result, he lost his election bid. Joe Biden is, to me, the Democratic version of Bob Dole and even faced with a widely loathed opponent in Donald Trump, the enthusiasm gap could be fatal much as it was with Hillary Clinton in 2016.  At this point, I admit, I do not know who the best candidate is to defeat Trump, other than my gut and years in politics suggest that it is not Joe Biden despite the bloviating of talking heads and others.  Here are highlights from the Times column:

On Saturday, Joe Biden was one of 20 presidential candidates to speak at a Planned Parenthood forum in Columbia, S.C., held right next door to the state’s Democratic convention. It was just a couple of weeks after he’d reversed his longtime support for the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion. One of the moderators asked him what he’d say to pro-choice voters who have concerns about his mixed record on the issue.

This was part of his answer: “The fact of the matter is that we’re in a situation where mortality rate for poor women and black women, here in this state, 26.5 percent of the, 24, 25.6 people, who of 100,000 who need, who end up dying as a consequence of birth, it’s absolutely absurd.” (He was referring to South Carolina’s maternal mortality rate, which is 26.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 births.)

Seeing Biden on the stump often feels like watching an actor who can’t quite remember his lines. Even if you don’t support him, it’s hard not to feel anxious on his behalf.

I had the chance to watch Biden campaign three times over the weekend, when almost the entire Democratic field descended on Columbia.

His performance was unnerving. I don’t want Biden to be the nominee for ideological reasons, but polls show him far ahead, and if he’s going to be the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer against Donald Trump, I want him to be a strong one. He didn’t seem strong in South Carolina.

Donald Trump, of course, also speaks in gibberish, but with a bombastic unearned confidence; rather than flailing around for the right figure he makes one up. Biden, by contrast, was just shaky. And while there’s great affection for him on the ground, there’s little excitement. You can see why his campaign has been limiting his public events and why he’s been avoiding the press.

It’s true that ordinary voters don’t seem to care about the gaffes that obsess cable TV commentators. No one I spoke to in Columbia was bothered by Biden waxing nostalgic about his civil relations with segregationist senators; most people hadn’t even heard about it. And his ability to forge personal connections remains impressive.

That’s Biden at his best — undisciplined, but with a big heart. But personal warmth won’t be enough without the ability to inspire masses of people. An ability to draw crowds isn’t everything — a tepid vote counts the same as a passionate one. Biden’s supporters are older than those of other Democrats, which gives his campaign less visible energy but a more reliable voting base. Still, as recent elections have shown, enthusiasm matters. Anyone convinced that Biden is the safe choice should go see him for themselves.

Biden is Running as Obama’s Heir. The Problem: He’s Not Obama

Joe Biden has now formerly thrown his hat into the crowded Democrat nomination race. Personally, like Bernie Sanders, I believe that Biden's time has passed and that it's time for a younger Democrat standard bearer who can lead the party and the country into the future rather than have the 2020 presidential election between two near geriatric candidates.  In Trump we already have an aging, out of touch (and in my view, mentally ill) candidate who frankly only bonds with white supremacists, religious extremists, and vulture capitalists who are driven by hatred and/or greed. Democrats need a counterpoint to that and Biden, is too old and too tide to the past to be an effective counter to Trump despite possible strengths with segments of the black community and union members.  Having seen Obama twice, once at very close range, the other reality is that Biden simply does not have Obama's charisma.  Democrats ran a candidate in 2016 who lacked charisma and we know how that turned out.  Here are highlights from a piece in Politico that looks at Biden's effort to be what he is not:

Joe Biden and Barack Obama got off to a rocky start in 2007, but they found their way to a mutual respect and good working relationship for the next eight years.

Obama showed his appreciation at the end of their second term by rewarding Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award possible.

I'm an Obama-Biden Democrat, man. And I'm proud of it,” Biden told reporters earlier this month.

Yet despite a legitimate claim to be the standard-bearer of President Obama’s legacy, Biden faces a fundamental challenge as he seeks his party’s nomination for the White House: Convincing the diverse and youthful coalition that elected Obama to two terms that a 76-year-old white man is the right person to carry the mantle.

To Biden and his advisers, age and race are inferior to the political realities of his special relationship with Obama. The question is whether primary voters will see it the same way, especially when the former president has indicated he’ll remain neutral in a crowded Democratic field filled with diverse and dynamic candidates.

One thing is certain: Obama’s political apparatus is not united behind Biden, whose campaign announcement comes after more than 20 other candidates launched their bids.
None of Obama’s inner circle of advisers have signed on with any campaign. But other Democratic contenders have snagged top-level Obama campaign talent and tapped its fundraising prowess.

While Biden’s campaign manager, Greg Schultz, led Obama’s campaign efforts in swing-state Ohio, Beto O’Rourke hired Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and has enjoyed the support of Paul Tewes, the 2008 Obama campaign’s director in first-in-the-nation Iowa. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren signed Joe Rospars, Obama’s chief digital strategist in 2008 and 2012, and Emily Parcell, political director for Obama’s 2008 Iowa caucus team. Several top former Obama administration officials contributed to Pete Buttigieg.

“I don’t think there’s any one standard bearer for the Obama legacy in this primary. There are multiple candidates who could carry that mantle,” said Ben LaBolt, former spokesman for Obama’s reelection campaign.

“A big question looming over the primary is: is this a moment for the longest record of experience or is this a moment for generational change within the party and a new vision within the party,” LaBolt said, noting that “even President Obama has talked about letting this be a moment for generational change and for others to lead and rise through the party and step up. So I don’t think it will be a completely clean shot if he tries to claim he’s the sole purveyor of his legacy.”

The generational split is clear in a February POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showing Biden is weakest with voters under the age of 30.

An Obama campaign veteran who had discussed working with Biden’s campaign said there’s a divide among former Obama staffers.  “A lot of us don’t want Joe to run. His time has passed and it’s not his moment,” the operative said. “The real Obama legacy is about the future, not the past. And if he runs, it’s going to put that legacy on trial in a Democratic primary where guys like Bernie [Sanders] are going to take shots at it and tarnish that legacy ... We want Joe to ride off into the sunset.”

Looking at the early state calendar, that support from black voters could be a big boost to Biden in South Carolina, where 60 percent of the primary electorate is black. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, has not endorsed any 2020 candidate but is a Biden ally who speaks favorably of him. . . . “There’s some love for Joe Biden,” he said, “and it’s because of Barack Obama and how he stood by him. People remember.”

Time will tell if Biden is delusional or not. Meanwhile, I have decided so far who I do not like and support but not yet found the candidate that has won my allegiance and who I think can successfully take on Trump. 

Biden Reportedly Delays Alleged Campaign Announcement

As the number of Democrat presidential nominee candidates still increasing - some I have to say I have no idea why they are even running other than out of vanity - word on the street is that Joe Biden's supposed announcement of his candidacy tomorrow is going to be delayed. While some see him as able to challenge Trump, his history of gaffes and failed primary runs - and his age - make me wonder if he doesn't suffer from the same vanity syndrome as the other largely unknowns who have thrown their hats in the ring and gained zero traction.  Like Sanders, I simple do not see Biden having the ability to unify Democrats and successfully challenge Trump in a battle between geriatrics. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the apparent delay which I for one wish would become permanent.  Here are article excerpts:

On Wednesday, former vice-president Joe Biden was expected to announce his candidacy for president with a video shot in part in his hometown of Scranton, followed by either a rally in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, or Charlottesville, Virginia. But according to Edward-Isaac Dovere, the Atlantic reporter who initially broke the details of Biden’s announcement, the campaign tip-off may be delayed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on Monday that Biden would not be traveling to Charlottesville on Wednesday, and that “considerations” involving the sites in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had been “scuttled.”

“Things are fluid,” a Biden adviser told Time on Friday. Despite that fluidity, Biden is still accepting campaign donations prior to his reportedly pushed-back announcement.

A former Biden aide also spoke with Time on Friday, with a level of candor that suggests they wouldn’t have been surprised by the shuffling of the announcement: “I’ve never seen anything so half-assed. They’re improvising and doing last-minute planning. The guy has been running for President since 1987 and can’t figure the basics out, like where to stand on his first day? This should make everyone very nervous.”

Politico reports that Biden could announce on Thursday, while noting that the timing is still “in flux.” Also in the report is a “battle plan” for the former veep, whose campaign intends to secure key union endorsements, like the International Association of Firefighters, and to rally around Biden’s support within the backbone of the party Establishment.

Despite allegations of unwanted physical contact, Biden has led the Democratic field throughout most of the primary race’s early months — he’s leading with 30 percent in the most current Morning Consult poll, six points ahead of the next contender, Bernie Sanders. But another Biden insider who spoke to Time expects that Biden’s lead during his non-campaign will be harder to maintain post-announcement: “This guy’s best day is the day he announces. Everything after that gets worse.”

Biden needs to NOT run.

The Danger of Electing a President Who is "Too Old"

Ageism is not a good thing.  But at the same time, ignoring the realities of the effects of age on political candidates carries its own risk, not the least of which is that the individual might die in office.  Others include the fading of intellectual and processing powers once one passes the age of 70.  The issue is timely as the country suffers under an elderly and mentally impaired occupant of the White House and two of his potential challengers are even older.  Personally, I believe that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are too old and, if Democrats are smart, they will nominate a younger standard bearer.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the very real decline that all of us will experience as we age.  Here are article highlights:

If Biden or Sanders triumphs in 2020, we enter an unprecedented age of — well, of old age in power. If reelected in 2024, Biden would start his second term at 82, Sanders at 83. If Trump won again, he’d still be president at 78 — 15 years older than Franklin D. Roosevelt was when he died in office in 1945.

50 is a better age than 76 to undertake perhaps the hardest job on Earth. The experts on aging (none as old as I) were generally more sympathetic to the idea that someone in their late 70s might be an effective president, but no one I’ve talked to thinks this is an ideal age for the role. The specialists know the numerous studies that show, unmistakably, that on nearly every scale of intellectual capacity, people over 70 have less to offer than younger generations. The one exception is the ability to learn and recall vocabulary.

Studies of old people conclude that between 16 percent and 23 percent of Americans over 65 experience some form of cognitive impairment. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that these subjects performed worse than others on tasks involving working memory — the ability to remember information while manipulating it, as when calculating the tip on a restaurant bill — and that they’re more impaired when those tasks become more complex. Older adults also have difficulties with tasks that require dividing or switching attention, . . 

On tests of reasoning, memory and cognitive speed, the average scores for adults in their early 70s were near the 20th percentile of the population, whereas the average performance for adults in their early 20s was near the 75th percentile. A Mayo Clinic study of 161 cognitively normal adults between 62 and 100 years of age showed that declines in learning ability closely track the passage of time. “Research has shown that concept formation, abstraction, and mental flexibility decline with age, especially after age 70 . . . .

Per the insurers’ tables, a President-elect Biden in 2020 would have a 26 percent chance of dying within the next five years; Sanders in 2020 would face a 29 percent chance of dying within five years; for Trump, it would be about a 20 percent chance of death before 2025.

[T]he unwillingness to discuss this decline bothers some people in the field of gerontology. “If talking about someone’s age is taboo and we are immediately accused of ageism, then that shuts down the discourse,” argues Jennifer Sasser, 52, a gerontologist at Oregon State University. . . . But “you can’t stay at the height of your capacity forever. That’s not the trajectory. We do become less energetic. Our bodies and minds do change.”

[T]he exact problem: Any given human could function at a high level well into his or her dotage. But these are outliers. The overwhelming majority decline. This happens to different people at different ages, but scientists have established that decline accelerates with advancing age: In a study at the University of Virginia, adults between the ages of 61 and 96 showed a decrease in cognitive speed twice as great as adults under age 60, and a drop-off in memory four times as great. Memory loss causes “slowed processing speed, reduced ability to ignore irrelevant information, and decreased use of strategies to improve learning and memory,” according to the University of Alabama’s meta-study.

Someone in his or her mid-70s undoubtedly could perform the job of president, but how effectively? The example of our 72-year-old incumbent raises questions about the meaning of “perform.” Is there any reason to think that picking someone with at least a 20 percent chance of dying in office is a good idea? Don’t we have a great many younger candidates who are more likely to survive and thrive in this most arduous of jobs?

Joe Biden Isn’t the Answer

As noted before, so far I have not decided on the Democrat presidential nominee contender that I support.  Rather, it continues to be a case of who I do not support: Sanders, Harris, Warren, Castro . . .and others to be identified.  Joe Biden - who still has not announced - will likely be added to that list largely because (i) I see him as too old, (ii) I worry about his elect-ability, and (iii) he has a lot of baggage that we can count on being dredged up and thrown his way should he be the nominee. Baggage that could significantly quell much needed enthusiasm to ensure anti-Trump voters actually go to the polls and cast their votes. A long piece in New York Magazine looks at some of this baggage and suggest how problematical it could be when  high turnout will be crucial from every element of the Democrat base.  Here are excerpts:

It’s still three months before the first Democratic debate, nearly a year before Super Tuesday, and he hasn’t even declared yet, but poll after presidential poll continues to show 76-year-old former vice-president Joe Biden leading an enormous, diverse, and talented Democratic field.

It’s almost poetically appropriate. . . . . He is the gaffe-master, the affable fuck-up, and also, oddly, the politician who’s supposed to make us feel safe. He is the amiable, easygoing, handsy-but-harmless guy who’s never going to give you a hard time about your own handsiness or prejudice, who’s gonna make a folksy argument about enacting fundamentally restrictive policies.

For his whole career, Biden’s role has been to comfort the lost, prized, and most fondly imagined Democratic voter, the one who’s like him: that guy in the diner, that guy in Ohio, that guy who’s white and so put off by the changed terms of gendered and racial power in this country that decades ago he fled for the party that was working to roll back the social advancements that had robbed him of his easy hold on power. That guy who believed that the system worked best when it worked for him.

Biden is the Democrats’ answer to the hunger to “make America great again,” dressed up in liberal clothes. The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie has in fact argued that Biden’s racial politics have offered a form of Trumpism on the left, a “liberal cover to white backlash.” To that I would add, he has provided liberal cover to anti-feminist backlash, the kind of old-fashioned paternalism of powerful men who don’t take women’s claims to their reproductive, professional, or political autonomy particularly seriously, who walk through the world with a casual assurance that men’s access to and authority over women’s bodies is natural.

Now it seems, That Guy is widely viewed as the best and safest candidate to get us out of this perilous and scary political period. But the irony is that so much of what is terrifying and dangerous about this time — the Trump administration, the ever more aggressive erosion of voting and reproductive rights, the crisis in criminal justice and yawning economic chasm between the rich and everyone else — are in fact problems that can in part be laid at the feet of Joe Biden himself, and the guys we’ve regularly been assured are Democrats’ only answer.

Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972, 18 years after Brown v. Board of Education, less than a decade after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and just three years after the Supreme Court case Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education would actually force many schools to fulfill the promise of integration put forth by Brown. Biden took office less than three weeks before Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court and a couple of years before the term “sexual harassment” would be coined by Lin Farley.

The right, meanwhile, was sucking strength from a backlash against disruptive social movements, growing fat and drunk on the language of piety and family values that would undergird its ultraconservative defense of the old power structures, self-righteously fueling up for the Reagan era. Republicans had, for the foreseeable future, won white men — America’s original citizens, the ones around whom our narratives and priorities are calibrated.

Rather than lean into an energetic defense of the values of liberty, equality, and inclusion that might define their role against the racist and anti-feminist backlash of the era, the Democratic Party appeared anxious to distance itself from being the feminized “mommy party,” and shunt to the side — rather than vigorously advocate for — the priorities of women, especially poor women, and people of color.

The party continued to be represented and led by mostly white men. And while officially Democrats remained on the progressive side, supporting reproductive rights, civil rights, and affirmative action, a contingent of Those Guys, Joe Biden notable among them, made folksy rationalizations for abrogating, rather than expanding and more fiercely protecting, new rights and protections.

A young Joe Biden was reliably anti-abortion, claiming that Roe v. Wade “went too far” and that he did not believe that “a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.” He voted consistently for the Hyde Amendment, the 1976 legislative rider which forbid government-funded insurance programs from paying for abortion, making abortion all but inaccessible to poor people. In 1981, he proposed the “Biden Amendment,” prohibiting foreign aid to be used in any biomedical research related to abortion. The next year, he supported Jesse Helms’s amendment barring foreign NGOs receiving United States aid from using that aid to perform abortion.

Over the decades, Biden has evolved on the issue, yet into the 1990s and 2000s, he voted for the so-called “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.” And he regularly declined to fully support the Freedom of Choice Act, which would have banned the wide variety of oppressive state restrictions on abortion. . . . Even in the years since he has officially become pro-choice, he’s retained the sensibility first reflected in his comments about how women shouldn’t be wholly in charge of their own decisions . . .

Biden wasn’t simply a comforter of patriarchal impulses toward controlling women’s bodies. Though he campaigned in 1972 as a strong supporter of civil rights, and initially voted in favor of school busing legislation intended to integrate schools in both the North and South, Biden changed his tune a couple of years into his Senate tenure. Faced with angry pressure from white constituents rearing back from integration measures that would mean busing white children into black neighborhoods, Biden previewed his anti-abortion agreement with Republican Jesse Helms by siding with him on anti-busing measures, calling the approach to school integration “a bankrupt concept” and “asinine policy.” Biden’s anti-busing stance offered an out for his Democratic colleagues, several of whom also turned on busing, helping to defeat the legislation.

In later decades, Biden’s legislative efforts reinforced other kinds of racial disparities. In 1988, he co-sponsored legislation that enacted mandatory-minimum sentences for drug possession, including higher sentences for those in possession of crack over powder cocaine, a ruling that specifically targeted poorer African-American and Latino populations, while letting wealthier white drug users off the hook.

But even those constituents — those guys in diners, worried about jobs and mounting debt — haven’t always been served by him. Biden, the senator from Delaware, where many credit card companies and banks are incorporated, has long advocated on behalf of those financial entities. This is one of the ironies of his role as blue-collar Everyman; that guy is regularly screwed by the very companies Biden represents. As beneficiary of enormous campaign donations from his home state’s financial behemoth MBNA, in 1999 Biden voted to repeal Glass-Steagall legislation that, since 1933, had separated commercial and investment banking, paving the way for the financial crisis. Biden was one of a handful of Democrats to oppose a measure that would have required credit card companies to warn consumers of the risks of only paying the minimum due on their credit card bills and worked against legislation that would have increased protections for those whose debts mounted thanks to medical bills and for those in the military.

Then, of course, there was his stewardship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which hit its infamous nadir with the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. . . . Perhaps most crucially, he declined to call any of the three women — Rose Jourdain, Angela Wright, and Sukari Hardnett — who were willing to testify about their own experiences of Thomas’s inappropriate behavior, and thereby corroborate Hill’s claims.

In talking to the Washington Post the year after those hearings, Biden would offer up a pretty good description of the forces that have shaped the political universe, and his role in it, through his decades in political life. “That last hearing was not about Clarence Thomas, it was not about Anita Hill,” he told E.J. Dionne. “It was about a massive power struggle going on in this country, a power struggle between women and men, and a power struggle between minorities and the majority, and it’s a reflection of the schizophrenic personality of the American public now with regard to both those issues, feminism and race.”

Biden is correct that these have been the major power struggles. What he seems less willing to admit is that over and over again, he has been on the wrong side of them.

To be fair to Biden, that is not the whole story of his political career. Because, yes, he has done good and progressive things as well. He has, in many ways, truly “evolved.” . . . As vice-president, Biden famously became an engaged supporter of gay marriage. He has worked to extend the Voting Rights Act and amendments to the Fair Housing Act. In 2010, he supported a bill that reduced those sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. He has voiced some support for $15 minimum-wage measures and has said that the vote he regrets most was the one to repeal Glass-Steagall legislation.

His great feminist achievement was the Violence Against Women Act, a crucial piece of legislation that Republicans remain eager to let lapse, and which is understood in many circles to have been a form of repentance for Biden’s horrifying failures regarding Anita Hill’s testimony.

Biden has managed to squeak out some mild expressions of regret for the impact of the crime bill and his role in the Hill hearings. But most of them feel empty, as if he is unwilling to acknowledge the active role he actually played.

But his remarks about Hill and his failure to account for his own shortcomings during her testimony — his unwillingness to take issues of harassment seriously, despite his work with “It’s On Us” — are only amplified by his actual behavior toward women. This week, Lucy Flores has written about the discomfort that she experienced when Biden touched her oddly before joining her onstage at a political event, days before the 2014 Nevada election in which she was running for lieutenant governor.

To some degree, the appeal of Biden makes sense. Disruption of social order is scary, eruptive, discombobulating. Middle-of-the-road white men feel safe to a country that was built by and around them. But the lasting power of a politician like Biden shows what happens when a period of reflexive comfort stands for too long. Because when you behave as if your party isn’t actually committed to fighting on the side of the disenfranchised, you don’t fight on the side of the disenfranchised.

[A] Supreme Court and decades of federal legislation shaped in part by Joe Biden and his party have managed to reverse many of the achievements of the 20th century’s most transformative social movements: the very achievements that had provoked the kind of backlash that politicians like Joe Biden were put in place to quell.

Very often, we are told — by people on television and in political media, perhaps by the people in our social circle and our families — that Joe Biden is the only way that Democrats can win in 2020. It’s a version of what we have been told over and over and over again for 50 years. But when I look at these last decades, I don’t actually see how much we’ve won with a party run by Those Guys. I see how much we’ve lost.