Democratic primaries: Biden’s best tactic is to play a straight game

He left it late. Donald Trump finally launched his presidential campaign this week, with only 504 days left before the 2020 election…

Yes, you read that correctly. Two days after his launch, there are still 502 days left before the polls open.

And, yes, it’s equally hard not to be cynical. The long wearisome cycle of US politics is even more risible this time around. Donald Trump never stopped campaigning. The moment he won the White House, the new president is said to have grown bored. He missed the crowds, the public acclamation, and the chance to vent about his rivals. He was a sore winner who could not see beyond the chance to relitigate what had gone before. Aides realised this quite early on and began to arrange rallies, making Trump perhaps the first president to start fighting for re-election in the early months of his first term.

It’s why this week’s “launch” in Florida – his home state, where polls say he already trails – was predictable. He ranted for an hour and a half about “crooked Hillary” and “the swamp” as if to underline what was already evident. Trump 2020 will look pretty much like (if not identical to) Trump 2016, bar a few “socialist” grace notes here and there.

It’s why all interest really lies with the Democrats. If Trump is predictable then the Democrats are only constant in their inconsistency. Biden is still riding high, with most polls giving him a double-digit lead over his nearest rival, but everything beneath him is a maelstrom of bubbles and slips. The biggest bubble currently envelopes Elizabeth Warren, who has seen her numbers climb after an impressive campaign (after a lamentable launch).

Biden now finds himself taking hits from the rest of the field. He’s the solid anchor to which they can attach themselves, hoping to lift themselves from the seething mass of also-rans.

If the other contenders needed to start scoring hits on Biden then, this week, Biden made it easy for them. Hits came in response to comments that the Vice President had made at a fundraiser on Tuesday night. A problem for Democrats might well be that many of their candidates lack a sense of perspective and Joe Biden has perspective in excess. He’s been around politics long enough to have experienced it in so many forms. So, when Biden spoke about his encounters with late-segregationist-era politicians, he did in order to explain how the ethos and language of politics have changed. His point, as if it needs explaining, is that no matter how divided America’s politics have been in the past, there was always “civility.” This was Biden preaching unity, respect, and advocating mature “sensible” politics.

So, naturally, there were immediate calls for him to apologise…

In these days when nuance is seen as a weakness, the leading candidates latched onto his words to imply something infinitely worse. This was racism writ large, they said. Kamala Harris said “if those men had their way, I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate” and Cory Booker went even further, picking apart the Vice President’s recollection that “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son’.” To Booker, those generous comments about the notorious Dixiecrat known as the “Voice of the White South”, were tantamount to making a “joke about calling black men ‘boys’.”

That might or might not be fair. It’s about scoring hits, though how they do that is fraught with the usual indeterminacies of politics. Harris and Booker might grab headlines with their protests but so too does Biden. This “controversy” allowed him to reclaim the headlines with the big statement: “There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career”. Which is the more powerful message? Therein lies the reason why there’s no such thing as a certainty in US Democratic politics.

The imminent debates in Miami, on the 26th and 27th of June, might see some movement but Warren and Biden are separated across the two nights. There could be challenges that Biden will struggle to ward off from, say, Bernie Sanders, but don’t be surprised if the nights resemble the BBC’s lamentable leadership debate from this week. They will be as much about the leading candidates getting through unscathed, whilst the lesser known candidates try to grab the moment without looking “unpresidential” (losing the tie, Rory, wasn’t a good move). If you can recognise the names of Jay Inslee, Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang by the end of it, they’ll have at least justified their places on the stage.

Biden, meanwhile, should continue to demand a higher standard of debate and refuse to attack his rivals. It remains a clever strategy. Playing a straight game suits him. What does not suit him is that leftist game of deconstructing language to expose hierarchies of power. Indeed, the Democrats ability to deconstruct is, in many ways, the same as their ability to self-destruct. If Democrats are to lose in 2020, it will be because they will tear themselves apart around arguments that are partly about political expediency and partly about orthodoxy. The other candidates need to destroy Biden and identity politics provide a means of doing just that. The danger is that they fail to notice that progressive can soon turn regressive, at least in terms of their electoral chances.