Biden sets a marker for Democrat candidates

From the moment he made the announcement that he would run for the presidency, Joe Biden has given political watchers plenty of reasons to doubt if he could become the Democratic nominee in 2020. Logic, we’re often told, just runs the wrong way for Joe. To counter Trump, Democrats need somebody more progressive, youthful, and willing to embrace the modern zeitgeist, hitting him where he lives on Twitter and TV. What they certainly don’t need is another “old white guy” preaching moderation.

Or so the argument goes…

The problem is that Democrats have a risible history of picking candidates. Mondale and Dukakis are still the stuff of nightmares but even Bill Clinton, who won in 1992, emerged as an unlikely candidate from a chaotic nomination process characterised by Gary Hart’s infidelities and Mario Cuomo indecisiveness. Biden could well be another bad choice. He would certainly be the oldest at 76 years. Even more worrying for supporters, the first months of his campaign haven’t been a resounding success. Although he’s retained strong leads in polls, he has not displayed much in the way of fighting spirit. His debate performances have been more solid than they have been electrifying. He was unfairly savaged by Kamala Harris but savaged nevertheless. He had shown a worrying servility to the will of the debate hosts, which is admirable in the sense of “playing fair” but has conveyed an unfortunate weakness. It has seemed at times that his poll leads have left him impotent; frightened of doing anything that might impact him negatively.

And then the terrible events of the weekend happened and Biden, along with other candidates, seem to have remembered what this fight is all about.

We saw it first with an impassioned, unscripted, and rather impressive Beto O’Rouke (I wrote about it on Monday for Reaction), though it has been noticeable how O’Rourke has since retreated back to… his campaign-style oratory… which, once noticed… becomes deeply grating… as you see how he parses… all of his… slightly breathless… sentences.

Last night, Biden also changed his approach. Abandoning plans to talk about agriculture in Burlington, Iowa, he made remarks in the light of the shootings but especially the one in El Paso, which looks to have been driven by white supremacism. The result was a speech that Biden himself said: “will set a marker for what we should be doing.” And, indeed, it should. It was a speech that should define his campaign for the next year. It contained powerful formulations that Biden would be wise to stick with.

Biden is not an orator in the way of that style of evangelical oratory has come to define American politics. He’s more Ronald Regan than he is Bill Clinton who would speak directly out of a Southern Baptist tradition. Biden is closer in style to Trump than he is to Obama and that is one of his better qualities. The absence of evangelicalism makes Biden a good counter to Trump. Compare his speech with that which Cory Booker gave from a pulpit, at Emanuel AME church, yesterday. Booker’s speech was of a kind we’ve heard so often in America. Booker spoke at length about American’s history with white supremacy (“bigotry”, he said, “was written into our founding documents”). It was a speech lofty in goals, inspired in language and delivery, yet also quite forgettable. That’s where Biden has an advantage. He isn’t wrapped in formulations that have become the clichés of political oratory. His speech was simple in language but also morality and, in that sense, it was so very American.

Biden began by noting that “[t]he words of a president matters. They can move markets, they can send our brave women and men to war, they bring peace, they can calm a nation in turmoil.” There the high ground is established but Biden soon shifted. In what was the most effective single line of his speech, his campaign, and perhaps even his political life, he turned on Trump. “His low energy, vacant-eyed mouthing of the words written for him condemning white supremacists this week, I don’t believe fooled anyone.” Wow.

“Vacant-eyed” makes the sentence work but don’t overlook “low energy”. That’s where Biden rewinds the clock to where all this began, with Trump’s brutal assault on Jeb Bush, who he had reduced to “low energy Jeb”. Using Trump’s words against him signals, perhaps, the nature of the coming battle. Biden isn’t going to yield the low ground to Trump. He will demand that America listen to their better angels but “Sleepy Joe” will also challenge Trump on that debased level.

The tenor of the speech was, then, high and low. Biden also set Trump in the context of American history. “If we give Donald Trump another four years,” he said, “this will no longer be the nation bound together by Lincoln.” Another smart point. Remember the awful kitsch painting of Trump drinking with Lincoln and other Republicans? Trump and Republicans too casually use Lincoln as if he were a member of the modern GOP when in fact, the two parties have effectively switched platforms (Democrats were, in Lincoln’s day, the part of White (southern) supremacy and small federal government). Here Biden reclaims him as a figure of liberal values.

Using history as a fulcrum is clever. Trump is acutely aware of power (especially his own powerless) as well as status. Comparing the Trump presidency with the achievements of other greater Presidents attacks Trump on that deeply personal level where he manifests the most weakness. Trump is not a politician. It’s doubtful if he understands conservativism as an ideology. Rarely does he argue around traditional Republican talking points: lower taxes, the overreach of government, or the importance of the family. Throughout his presidency, Trump has been unable to resist dragging politics to the level of personal animus. Look how the healthcare debate was framed by Trump’s hostility to Senator John McCain. The government shutdown became a war of wills with Chuck Schumer. In the past month, immigration has become a matter of personal insults traded (largely) by Trump towards four congresswomen all of whom are non-white.

Even as he visited an emergency coordination center in El Paso, Texas, yesterday, Trump boasted of the “love, the respect for the office of the presidency. It was, I wish you could have been in there to see it.” It’s another glimpse of the ego, self-importance, as well as the deep pathological fears that Trump exhibits. It gives Biden a vector for his attacks.

Ending with a flourish, the Vice President resorted to simple old-fashioned rhetoric. “We choose hope over fear. We choose science over fiction. We choose unity over division.” Not particularly effective so far. “And, yes,” said Biden, leaning into his microphone as if he was leaning into the coming fight, “we choose truth over lies.” If he’s looking for a new campaign slogan, that should be it. And if this Joe Biden can carry this anger through the next few months, the Democrats might well have found their challenger.