Joe Biden: Smooth-operating president-in-waiting or overhyped set of dentures on stilts?
The former Vice President is possibly a stealth genius and possibly a slick used car salesman
In the quest to rid this planet of the likes of one Donald John Trump, our saviors — the Democratic Party — have put forward a candidate in our forty-seventh Vice President who raises legitimate questions about the future. Nonetheless, Joe Biden may be elevated to the office of President after a campaign like no other that has seen the frontrunner sidelined by events and reduced to making Zoom calls in a nondescript Delaware basement. Setting aside Mango Mussolini for long enough to examine the almost-certain victor of the November election, his path forward deserves some thought.
How Joey from Scranton unifies the country
He has finally made it. Thirty-two years after his first attempt, he is in pole position to ascend to the highest office in the land. And yet, after a career that has spanned a half-century and has consumed his entire adult life, serious questions remain about how Biden will govern.
Will he be tough on crime, as the Biden crime bill and its legacy suggests he would be? Or will he work to reform or defund the police? On issues of medical care, will he sideline the Left and go for a middle-of-the-road milquetoast “expansion” of Obamacare, or will he cave to the pressure to sign legislation to authorize Medicare for All despite his previous veto threat? Undecided Pennsylvania voters might want to know whether the prospective President and his chosen successor would keep fracking or ban it.
The truth is that not much is clear on the policy front. In a primary campaign full of discussion on the nuances of preferred progressive dictates (including, apparently, abortions for men), the collapse of the primary field following same-day withdrawals and Biden endorsements from Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg consolidated non-socialist support behind the former Vice President in an attempt to remain electable and prevent a protracted primary season.
In dispensing with Biden’s challengers, it seems that a focus on policy differentiation also disappeared from the field, with the theory of the case against Trump reduced to a pledge to restore the “soul of America,” however the Biden campaign might define that. Absent concrete policy achievements that improve people’s lives, few souls are primed to budge from their entrenched positions. It remains to be seen how Biden will succeed in breaking the line.
A heavy pour of the “secret sauce” of the Obama era
Joe Biden tends to overstate the importance of his association with Obama when it suits him politically. The truth is slightly more complex than the “best friends” imagery we are all familiar with. After achieving 1% in the 2008 Iowa caucus, Biden withdrew from his second contested presidential nominating contest and endorsed the eventual winner. Biden was shortlisted for Vice President alongside party luminaries such as Evan Bayh, Bill Richardson, and Tim Kaine and rewarded with the #2 spot before the convention in Denver. Biden was an astute debater against Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in the Vice Presidential debate and was effective in delivering a larger margin in Biden’s birth state of Pennsylvania for the ticket than the Kerry/Edwards ticket received four years prior.
But aside from electoral benefits, the selection of Biden to be Vice President was not consequential. “Amtrak Joe,” his aviator glasses, and his “no malarkey” shtick had a short shelf life in Obamaland. What experience Biden brought with him to the Obama administration was sidelined as Biden often found himself on the wrong side of the toughest decisions of the day. Biden was a noted Iraq war hawk (the opposite of Obama) who cautioned his old boss against executing the mission that ultimately eliminated Osama bin Laden. Biden’s long record in the Senate and in public life — including the embarrassing events culminating in the fizzling-out of his 1988 presidential aspirations — was glossed over in the 2008 campaign or ignored altogether. Cadres of Ivy League administration officials reportedly sidelined the University of Delaware-trained Biden, perhaps giving him credibility as a sufficiently anti-Elite figure despite his long history in office.
How did his association with Obama prepare him to handle the presidency? This persists as an open question. Electorally, the association has certainly paid handsome dividends. After embarrassing showings in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, a meaningful endorsement by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) rocketed Biden to the nomination on the same fuel of heavy Black turnout in southern states that gave Obama the edge over Hillary Clinton in 2008.
In what ways will Obamaland diverge from the Biden administration? Few can predict how Biden will handle criticisms that differentiate him from his former boss. Biden has tethered his efforts to the Obama administration and has drawn loyalty to the diehard Obama base. What remains to be seen is what happens when it is Biden, and not Obamaland, who is in charge.
Fending off the Left flank
In the way that Barack Obama coddled the hopes of the Left during his administration, Joe Biden seems to be completely unmoved by the emboldened progressive flank. For two cycles, a candidate identifying himself as a democratic socialist[1] has won numerous state primary contests and garnered significant public support. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton depended on their support to boost her chances. This time around, the Biden team has less appetite for their interventions into his ascendancy.
While some on the Left have gathered behind the Biden effort in order to get something out of their efforts, others are holding out. One argument made by people on the Left for a Biden presidency is that the Left must settle for him now, and then pressure him later. But if you have not pressured him up to this point, where is the leverage to pressure him in the future?
The golden goose of progressivism — Medicare for All — is explicitly off the table in a Biden administration, as Biden prefers a piecemeal approach to meddling with the Obama legacy. Endorsing Medicare for All is a tacit admission that Obamacare failed, and Biden does not want to be the one responsible for that footnote in history.
Biden seems to be amenable to being pressured into supporting foreign conflicts and has placed emphasis on the importance to trust the intelligence community — yes, the same intelligence community from the hit conflict Iraq War II: Saddam in the Foxhole — and has criticized the President for casting doubt on the dubious characters and claims that emerge from our spy network.
Can he boost minority turnout beyond Obama levels?
Almost every public opinion poll suggests that Biden is in a position to win in important swing states with a large contingent of minority voters. North Carolina is a good case study of the potential Biden polling mirage. Surveys consistently show the Biden/Harris ticket ahead of the Trump/Pence ticket statewide, even though North Carolina has voted Democratic once since 1980 — in 2008, when Barack Obama won the state by 14,000 votes.
Are advances in suburbia among the professional/managerial class stratum enough to clinch the Tar Heel State this time around? With proportionally fewer registered Democratic voters in North Carolina now than in 2008, Biden would need to find new voters in order to close a 173,000-vote gap that halted Clinton’s advance to 270 four years ago.
Without North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes, the minority-turnout strategy almost certainly fails. With North Carolina, the Biden campaign still needs to pick up several other large electoral prizes to cobble together the math necessary to win, including in southern states where the Democratic nominee has performed poorly in the post-Reagan era.
I am a hobby psephologist and blogger who is preparing to experience yet another presidential election in the United States. I am writing as a hobby and I appreciate any support in my labor of love from those who appreciate this contribution to political discourse. I will be publishing new columns every Wednesday and Sunday until the week of the election, with more content hopefully to come thereafter. Thank you for reading.
[1] A brief note on the contradiction between “democratic” and “socialism”: Bernie Sanders is careful to define this term to mean a non-authoritarian version of socialism, if such an Easter Bunny can exist without its inherent contradictions eventually tearing it asunder. Sanders has not elucidated his thoughts about the aspects of each system coexisting — i.e., if the democratic will is for less socialism or socialist programs, how shall an established democratic socialist system oblige? The built-in assumption is that there will never be a democratic will for less socialism, only more — but this assumption sets aside historical factors resulting in the civil disobedience of the population and the removal of those systems even without a democratic mechanism. In the Sandersian worldview, it remains to be seen whether “democratic” is the meaningful word, or “socialism.”
