The Race and Biden
Just to be clear - I voted for Bernie Sanders. I’m not a Bernie Bro or a long-time admirer. But I was caught up in the historic nature of his campaign, the sheer audacity of what he tried to do in 2016 and 2020. And I began to believe that the enormous structural change this country needs could be talked about because Bernie is afraid of nothing. He has flaws. But no politician since Bobby Kennedy has the toughness and the courage to tell the truth the way Bernie Sanders does. (Oh - and my daughter worked for him!!!)
But then the MRI machine of politics kicked in. The huge mass of American voters got a closer look at the Bernie platform and the enormous change he promised and got a teeny bit queasy about what it meant. Medicare for All, Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage, Wall Street regulation, taxes on stock trades, carbon taxes.
People like my Dad started saying: “He is right. But doesn’t he go a little far?’’
Hence the move to Joe Biden, which in hindsight should have been seeable. As America is in the midst of a massive economic transformation, Biden is a transitional figure. A guy from the 1980s. Catholic. Sunday afternoon dinners with family. He calls his wife Jillie. A senator from another time. He knows the workers on his AMTRAK train. He knows the elevator operator in the Senate. He was friendly with all senators back then. Biden is intensely social and a lot of us like that kind of guy. Or at least we feel safer with that kind of guy.
I have watched Joe Biden since 1986, when I went to Washington, D.C. as a young reporter.
Back then he was louder and brasher, but essentially the same. People don’t change all that much, although we like to think they do.
With a week to go, I’m under siege from friends and family asking about the election. Here’s what I say.
Biden wins. It’s different from 2016. The anti-Trump intensity is everywhere. The demographic shift in America continues from white to brown. And young people are voting. And Biden is a better candidate than Trump, whose ego defeats any attempt at a coherent campaign strategy.
Weirdly, Biden stacks up pretty well vs. Trump. He is immune to the Trump tactics, which adopt the Nixon Southern Strategy of racism and stoking the fear that black kids are coming for your wife and the tax man is coming for your profits and freedom. “The wife” is no longer home making lunch and driving carpool. And maybe - just maybe - voters are wising up to the Republican lie that they handle the economy better than Democrats. The evidence is the opposite. Budget deficits go down under Democrats and the stock market goes up. Here is the fact.
“Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 took it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion. Obama halved it to $600 billion. Trump’s got it back to a trillion.”
Biden is human and caring. He wears emotion on his sleeve. Trump conceals all.
Biden openly loves his children, family and friends. Trump dislikes everyone, even his family, if they don’t help him secure the spotlight.
Biden will tell you he made a mistake. Trump never concedes, ever.
Biden is the anti-Trump. Bernie would have trounced Trump. Workers in Ohio and Wisconsin still angry about free trade would vote for Bernie - for the same reason they voted for Trump!!! It would have been Bernie in a landslide.
But Biden - despite his shortcomings - just might be made for this moment. It is pretty clear that a majority of Americans see Biden as more human, more caring, more decent than Trump. (Not hard) It is also clear that they want a more dependable routine from their president. Biden gives them that.
Biden has little of the baggage that doomed Hillary Clinton’s campaign four years ago.
Trump voters - except the crazy ones - wanted to make a statement in 2016. Clinton was the fall-guy/girl, taking on all bad stuff that had built up over decades, often not her fault. I actually buy her comment about a vast right-wing conspiracy. But that’s for another day.
Along comes Biden. He looks the part. His speech is halting and doesn’t quite match up with his brain. But that’s OK. We have watched him for years and we think he is a good guy. Born in Scranton, PA. University of Delaware (not Yale). Talks about the lessons from Dad and Mom about being a good guy. We get that. It’s OK.
We know he is not a socialist. We know how he will handle AOC and Bernie. And we know how he will handle Mitch McConnell. We know he will tip the balance of power in the Judiciary back to the middle. We know he will work on the budget deficit and the debt. We know he will make climate change a priority, with an eye on the economic realities. We know that his Justice Department will do something about Google, Amazon and Microsoft. And we know he will have a secretary of state who can deal with the world. We know he will issue a national pandemic strategy involving mask wearing, PPE to front line workers, on-demand testing and a vaccine.
Above all, we know Biden will be a president. And that was always Trump’s worst nightmare. He couldn’t brand Biden corrupt or a socialist, although he tried. He couldn’t brand him old and out of touch.
But in the end, here is the key thing with Biden, which is really about Trump. When Biden talks, you can be fairly sure he means it. When Trump talks, you KNOW he doesn’t mean it. And voters figure that out.
In the end, Biden wins by taking many of the swing states because those voters trust him more than they did Clinton and they sense he will return normalcy to the government.
If that doesn’t happen and Trump wins, it means there is far more anger out there than we knew, Republicans succeeded in suppressing the vote and the pandemic scared people into staying home.
