Politics is a game of often small margins; those narrow calculations that make the difference between victory and defeat. They’re the “We’re all right” moments that steered fate when Neil Kinnock seemed to have victory in sight in 1992. It might even be the kind of difficult political decision that now has the Conservatives believing that Johnson avoiding the Andrew Neil interview produces less bad press than anything that might happen in a unpredictable half hour of prime time television.
In America, meanwhile, the Democrat’s leading candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, is trying to measure his response to constants attack from Republicans who want to portray him as corrupt and self-serving. Thus far, he’s laughed it off and tried to turn it onto the President. Nobody believes it. There’s nothing to it. We all know what they’re trying to do and that’s deflect from the reality that we now how the most corrupt president in the history of the Republic…
Biden now seems to have realised that this isn’t much of an answer. It suited him for the first few days and perhaps weeks. He needed something better.
Which brings us to Thursday when Biden made news for snapping at a voter who had asked him a question on his “No Malarkey” tour. The guy was an elderly farmer who had been chewing a bit too much of the Fox News fertilizer. He used the opportunity at the Iowa Town Hall meeting to present Biden with a summary of the allegations around Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings. As is the way with these things, the question rambled a bit. As it careened, it smacked into a few sore spots. Some of it was phrased in ways which were, to say the least, lacking subtlety.
“You […] sent your son over there to get a job and work for a gas company”, said the man who fairly noted that Hunter Biden “had no experience in natural gas”. Less fair and, in fact, plainly wrong: “You’re selling access to the president just like he is.”
Biden slowly walked the stage only a few feet away until he could take no more.
“You’re a damn liar, man!” he shouted, the mic in the venue set not so much at a Spinal Tap 11 but, rather, Denture Fracturing 15. The audio boomed, making some of what Biden said hard to distinguish. Perhaps at one point he said “fat” but he might have said “fact.”
“Let’s do push-ups together here, man,” he challenged, moving on to the question of his fitness for the job. “Let’s run. Let’s do whatever you want to do. Let’s take an IQ test.”
The response was angry, in some ways compelling, but not quite enough of to give a clear indicator if this was strategy or instinct.
In other words: small margins.
What was good for Biden and his supporters was that he finally pushed back in a way that made headlines. Critics will say he lost his temper but, even if true, that’s not entirely without merit.
Biden’s campaign is founded upon the idea that he’s the one person who will take the fight to Trump. He might stutter (a life-long challenge, we recently learned), ramble under pressure, and generally be sub-optimal in formal settings. But Biden’s gift isn’t that he’s gifted in that kind of politics. He arguably does normal human emotions better than the rest. He cries. He laughs. He hugs (sometimes too much). He also gets angry. He might have stopped using the line he’d been repeating too often the past few months but “I’ll beat Trump like a drum” captured the essence of the Biden ticket. It’s reasonable to think that he captures the mood of half of the American public if he does shout back. America might have had enough of people trying to rationally argue against rank stupidity.
What was less good for Biden was that he again didn’t quite answer the question which, even if badly presented, contains a gnarly issue he should try to resolve. What’s odd is that the Biden camp haven’t come up with the kind of formula that seems self-evident.
“I’ve lost a wife and I lost a daughter,” he should begin. “Then I lost a son. Does that make me protective of my other son, Hunter? Damn right it does. But did I protect him by using my influence to land him jobs in Ukrainian energy? No I did not and anybody who says otherwise is a damn liar. Should I have advised him against taking the position, I should, but, you know, Hunter is a grown man. He makes decisions on his own. Does he make mistakes. You bet he does. Do those mistakes cause me political grief. Obviously! But there was no corruption. And let me tell you… I would never … never… give him a job inside government. I wouldn’t make family members advisers to the President. I wouldn’t own a hotel in Washington DC where the Attorney General is spending $30,000 to host his family’s Christmas party.”
This then leads neatly into the numbers game whereby Biden could justifiably compare the alleged sums around Hunter’s time with Burisma Holdings with the millions being earned by Trump’s family.
Again, we’re talking small margins but if Biden just accepted that the Buisma story looks bad, his testimony is then even more compelling when he denies any wrongdoing.
Biden’s campaign has survived the autumn by doing very little. He’s weathered storms by simply lying at anchor far enough offshore to escape damage. As he begins to campaign more, he will need to find answers to this one question. And he will need strong answers. There’s already talk of Trump using his trial before the Senate in January to go after his political enemies. He and Mitch McConnell, who really guides the impeachment process through the upper chamber, will no doubt attempt to get the Whistleblower into a public hearing. There’s talk, too, that Hunter Biden and perhaps even Joe Biden will be dragged in. It’s unclear how much that’s Republican dreaming, rather than political reality. Such a show trail would delight Trump’s base but it’s hardly going to win over the more liberal Republican senators, who might object to such stunts.
It is, however, a good indicator of how toxic the 2020 election will be and why Biden needs a slightly better reply than he had on the trail in Iowa yesterday. Critics will argue that he responded poorly and didn’t answer the allegations beyond a broad denial. His supporters, however, will be reassured that he’s fighting back. They should just hope that he genuinely can do press-ups because if he keeps offering to get down with anybody who questions his age, he will eventually be called upon to prove what he claims. Perhaps, though, he’s saving that for his head-to-head with Trump next year…
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