The biggest presence at the Democratic debates last week was somebody who wasn’t even there.
President Donald Trump’s shadow loomed large over the 20 candidates. It also impacted viewers, who had to weigh not only each candidate’s positions and temperament, but also his or her chances of emerging victorious over Trump in 2020.
One of the most significant question marks was Joe Biden, taken to school by Kamala Harris on his misguided attempts earlier this month to explain that he can work with anybody, including racist senators of past decades.
Biden stumbled through a states’ rights argument in response to Harris’s emotional comments about segregation and busing. It wasn’t his finest moment. Time — and polling — will tell how much it may have hurt him and helped Harris.
That misfire aside, Biden is still the candidate who has the chops, not just to face Trump, but to entice enough voters on the fringes of the president’s base to defect.
And those voters are there. They’re farmers who are feeling the pinch of Trump’s threatened trade wars. Workers who are tired of being underemployed and underpaid. Young parents who are concerned about the environmental state of the planet after Trump rolled back policies to regulate pollution. Patriots who wonder why the president so often trusts foreign dictators over his own country’s intelligence agencies. Compassionate people disgusted by the humanitarian crisis at the border and the president’s disavowal of any blame.
Many voters may just be exhausted by the profusion of ridiculous statements and pronouncements from Trumplandia. The endless river of tweets. The growing line of women who claim he has assaulted them. His dismissive denunciations (“She’s not my type,” Trump said of E. Jean Carroll, his latest accuser) that betray such casual misogyny.
Of course, no Democratic candidate will ever pry loose the MAGA-hat-wearing adherents for whom Trump performs so obligingly at various rallies. These folks will never be converted.
And let’s be honest: Even lukewarm Trump supporters are not going to be won over by the Democratic party’s far-left-leaning proclivities — including voters who just went along to get along, so to speak, intrigued by Trump’s outsider status and badboy-dealmaker persona (one largely created by the ghostwriter of his autobiography, if those accounts are to be believed).
I felt a cold fist squeeze my heart during the debates, when candidate after candidate expressed support for a woman’s right to choose and universal healthcare. This is not because I don’t agree with them — I do — but because I knew how that message would play in living rooms across the Rust Belt.
But in Biden, Democrats have a candidate who can soft pedal aspects of the Democratic progressive ticket that are least appealing to Republicans. He speaks their primary language of economics fluently, which is a major job criterion.
His age, too, could be an asset to fringe voters. A candidate with one foot in the past, he is a convenient bridge between a moderate platform and the more assertive progressivism of Harris or Pete Buttigieg, who might be too threatening for Republicans looking for an escape route from Trump.
Even Biden’s assertiveness on Thursday night, which veered toward anger, is a more enlightened version of Trump’s egomania. All Biden’s flaws — the weird verbal peccadillos, the awkward grabbing and shoulder rubs, the occasional lapses into Aggrieved Old White Man Speak — could be counted as strengths not only among defecting Republicans but also older Democrats who feel other candidates have moved too far to the left.
“Better Than Trump and Still Comfortable” isn’t the most compelling campaign slogan, but it best captures Biden’s appeal.
What would be really fetching, albeit improbable, would be a Biden/Harris or Biden/Buttigieg ticket in 2020. Give Biden one term to serve as a stop gap after four years of insanity, and then set up a presidential bid by his VP.
Would I rather see either Harris or Buttigieg earn the Democratic nod? Personally, yes. But the nation simply cannot risk four more years of Trump, so Dems need to think strategically here.
Right now, that means Uncle Joe.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Originally published July 5, 2019, in The Alliance Review.
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