On the eve of Joe Biden’s expected victory in the South Carolina primary, I’m asking myself: How many Americans – given the specific choice between voting for Donald Trump or voting for Joe Biden or not voting at all – would vote for Biden?
And I’ve come to the conclusion that Joe Biden could be a strong candidate against Donald Trump.
Whether he’d be the strongest or not, I don’t know. But I think he’d get the lion’s share of the electorate pulling the lever for him.
That’s despite some weaknesses Biden has that have concerned me throughout this campaign:
Despite, for example, Biden having long dealt with the Republicans as if he didn’t understand what the Republican Party had become, and having seemed in general clueless about the necessity of fighting back against a Republican Party that’s made our politics into unrelenting political warfare. (Even during this campaign, he’s talked about dealing with Republicans as if all that were necessary was to bring his “reaching across the aisle” skills to bear on our “polarized” politics. Didn’t he see how they spurned Obama’s repeated efforts to find a cooperative path?)
But even though he’s not seemed to be the fighter we need to deal with the Republican Party that has shown itself to be utterly morally bankrupt, on the debate stage lately we’ve heard a Joe Biden in fighting mode against Trump. It seems that Biden has at least perceived Trump – if not the Party that gave us Trump and supports him still -- in all of Trump’s un-American repulsiveness. He denounces Trump’s betrayal of all the American values that Biden clearly holds close to his heart.
And that brings me to what seems to me to be Biden’s greatest strength.
Biden manages to convey his basic commitment to honor the basic values of the United States. Indeed, Rep. Jim Clyburn, in giving a very moving endorsement of Biden on Wednesday, declared, "I can think of no one with the integrity, no one more committed to the fundamental principles that make this country what it is than my good friend, Joe Biden.”
That makes Biden the opposite of Trump in a particular way that I believe a majority of Americans will find of essential importance in this particular election: i.e. when we have witnessed a President brazenly trampling on the norms, laws, and constitutional order that have been the foundation for so many of the blessings that we Americans have enjoyed through the generations.
So I think it would be a sound political bet that the great majority of Americans – given a choice between Trump’s lawless indecency and the very decent Joe Biden who believes in the American ideals of rightful government – would choose Biden.
That most Americans would want to restore the ideals and normality that Trump has attacked was the premise of my piece of yesterday, “Make America America Again: A Campaign Slogan for the Democrats This Year.” https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/27/1922218/--Make-America-America-Again-A-Campaign-Slogan-for-the-Democrats-This-Year And I think that Biden is exceptionally well-suited to the task of defeating Trump on precisely that basis.
I’m betting that the people will eagerly vote to get a President who works to take good care of the nation and plays by the rules. Just the opposite of what we get with Trump.
Then there’s the question of competence.
The other weakness of Biden’s that has concerned me is that he seems to have lost some of his sharpness—because, it would appear, of the effects of age. And that, combined with his life-long issues with a stammer, results in Biden’s rhetorical performance being less than impressive.
But despite Biden’s real shortcomings as a political “orator, ” he ultimately succeeds in getting his idea out. And the basic ideas that Biden communicates almost always have some substance and truth to them.
And even if Biden may not seem super-sharp, his claims of understanding how a president can get good things accomplished – as a result of having participated in a whole lot of problem-solving of the kind a president faces -- are probably quite valid.
He may not dance so well, but he basically knows the steps.
Voters will find reassuring that Biden knows how to use the powers of the presidency to move the nation forward, beginning to repair the damage that Trump has done and to getting America onto a constructive path forward.
Biden is not my first choice. (And I think Elizabeth Warren is the candidate most likely to best Donald Trump on the debate stage.) But if Biden emerges out of the process as the Democrats’ nominee for President of the United States, I will be optimistic that American democracy – under threat in this 2020 election like never before—will survive.
As survive it absolutely must for the sake of the future for us Americans and even for all humankind.