Candidate Biden's strengths are also his weaknesses
Experience, empathy and a message of return to normality from the Obama era are the great assets of the Democrat, but they can also be his drag
Humanity, empathy in grief, do they add or subtract? Almost half a century of political career, is it a baggage or a burden? And is the ability to build bridges, to reach agreements with political rivals, constitute a virtue or a defect in times of polarization and the cult of ideological purity? The presidential candidacy of Democrat Joe Biden, guaranteed last week after the withdrawal of his last primary rival, Bernie Sanders, will provide an opportunity to prove it.
On November 3, in a country dragged into a brutal crisis by the coronavirus pandemic, a 77-year-old white man, oblivious to the new sap that has transformed his party, will face the fury of Donald Trump with a series of assets that are, at the same time, its weaknesses and its strengths.
Marked for losses
On November 7, 1972, Republican Richard Nixon achieved his re-election with a landslide victory. In the midst of the Democratic debacle, an almost unknown 29-year-old Joseph Robinette Biden was winning a Delaware Senate seat, by the narrowest and against the odds. The joy would not last long for the young lawyer.
A few weeks later, when he was in Washington forming his team, a truck was driving the family car on a highway in Delaware. His first wife, Neilia, and their daughter Naomi, just one year old, died on the spot. Their sons Beau and Hunter, ages three and two, were injured. Joe Biden was not separated from his children until they were released from the hospital. Right there, in the room where his children were recovering, he was sworn in as a United States senator.
In 2015, brain cancer took his 46-year-old son Beau, then a rising star of the Democratic Party. Before he died, he made his father promise that he would move on and not sink. A promise that would give title to his memories (Promise me, dad) in 2017.
The hard personal history of the candidate, who was about to end his political career, generates empathy in the electorate. It has been seen in the campaign. It did not drag crowds. It did not arouse enthusiasm. But when he connected with his voters, he did so in a more personal and intense way than anyone else.
Two resounding defeats
Politics, for Biden, has been something of a catharsis. A way of claiming, before the people and before himself, that he goes on despite everything. But here too it has suffered hard blows. He lost two presidential races. The first, in 1987, was a real disaster that ended amid embarrassing accusations of plagiarizing speeches. He spent 20 years rebuilding his reputation and in his second attempt, in 2008, he fell to the power of the establishment that clothed Hillary Clinton and the charisma of Barack Obama.
Biden's public and private life is defined, to a large extent, by all that he has lost. For decades, the United States has seen him lose. His failed presidential careers are artillery for a president like Trump, the embodiment of the typical school bully who divides the world into winners and losers. But losing and knowing how to overcome connects with the spirit of the country. "There is nothing more American than that strength, drawn from faith and a sense of duty, to never give up," said Blake Muller, a 50-year-old chemical company worker, at an event at the start of the campaign.
Half a century of experience. “He's been around for a long time, and that makes him the ideal candidate. If you arrive at the White House, you will be ready from day one. It does not need a shoot to unite the country and regain lost international leadership, "defended Dawn Musgrove, 55-year-old cook, in a meeting with voters in Iowa. The argument is repeated among her followers. Eight years of vice president, 36 of senator. No candidate has been able to display comparable baggage. But that same public experience has generated a newspaper library full of artillery for his detractors. In 1991, during Supreme Justice Clarence Thomas' nomination hearings, Biden chaired the all-male panel that patronized Anita Hill when she accused the judge of sexual harassment. The senator voted in favor of the deregulation of banking and the war in Iraq. Joe Biden, his critics defend, has been a part of every mistake Democrats have made in recent decades.
Obama sought out an older man with political weight to fill out his ticket, and offered Biden the vice presidency. Biden led important issues in the Administration. Among them, the control of arms or the Law of Reinvestment and Recovery of 2009, after the great financial crisis. In May 2012 he came out in favor of same-sex marriage, forcing Obama to announce his change of position days later. He also dealt with thorny international political issues, such as Ukraine, which would end up in trouble. His troubled son Hunter worked for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, while his father led efforts to fight corruption in the former Soviet country. The willingness to investigate his affairs, in an unorthodox way, was what led Donald Trump to impeachment from which he was exonerated earlier this year. There is no evidence of misconduct, but few doubt that Hunter Biden's generous fees for this and other lobbying work also paid for his last name. An uncomfortable stain for a presidential race, one that Trump has exploded and will undoubtedly explode.
The Nostalgia Seller
The slogan of his campaign leaves no room for misunderstandings: "Recover the soul of the nation." Little more. What Joe Biden sells is a throwback to the past. The biggest ovations at his rallies come when he mentions Obama. To his critics, Biden does not sell more than a plate of leftovers. But many Democratic voters, especially African-Americans, cite their relationship with the former president and nostalgia for that Administration as the main argument for their support for Biden.
There are specific policies that he will try to implement, no doubt, but what Biden emphasizes is that he is pursuing something greater than that. It seeks to recover the values of the country that Trumpism has corrupted. A reasonable argument to appeal to a majority that negatively values the president's management, but perhaps insufficient to mobilize a part of the population that already felt abandoned before and demands a rupture like the one that Trump embodied or that offered by Sanders. The coronavirus crisis may have changed things. There is nothing Americans want more today than a return to normalcy. The pandemic has provided Biden with an opportunity to shift his message from the abstract to the concrete.
A normal and (too) close guy
Biden's family never fell into poverty, but neither did they weather its onslaught. Before settling in Delaware as a car salesman, his father had trouble supporting the family, and at one point they had to go live with their maternal grandparents. Putting "middle class Joe" on his ticket helped Obama broaden his support. Biden doesn't have the public speaking prowess of the last Democratic president. In the debates he is wrong, he messes up and gets stuck, a legacy of stuttering that he overcame as a child. David Axelrod, Obama's political strategist, defined Biden in Time magazine as "a porcelain candidate, to whom you do not have to expose much." But that fragility also has a certain charm among an electorate tired of politicians who seem manufactured in series.
One of Biden's assets is to present himself as a close man. But that warmth also has its delicate reverse. Shortly after starting this last presidential race, he had to defend himself against accusations of unsolicited physical contact in his interactions with women voters. He apologized and claimed that he is an empathetic person, but admitted that the standards have changed. The episode again underscored his distance from the values of modern progressivism.
A pragmatic politician
Biden has been noted for his ability to negotiate with his Republican rivals. Something key in a system like the United States, in which only with great consensus (or with overwhelming majorities on Capitol Hill, today unlikely) can significant transformations be achieved. But that very ability to compromise, particularly when the counterpart is someone as shady as segregationist Jesse Helms, has provided arguments to his critics in the progressive sector.
"You don't just have to fight," Biden defends at his rallies, "you also have to heal." He firmly believes in the value of consensus and insists on seeking meeting points with Republicans. It is not the preferred strategy of those who want a revolution, but it can be useful in key states with moderate voters. And it's part of Biden's seduction among the bulk of the Democratic electorate, for whom preventing a second Trump term is the top priority.
A WOMAN VICE PRESIDENT FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
If Joe Biden wins the November elections, the United States will have a female vice president for the first time in history. That, which will be a woman, is the only thing that is known about the person that the Democratic candidate will choose to complete the so-called 'ticket' (as the pair of candidates for president and vice president are known). This was promised during the primary campaign.
The former Democratic vice president assures that he is considering between half and a dozen candidates to fill the position he held during the Barack Obama administration, and that his intention is to announce his name well before the party's convention in summer. "I will need a woman who has capabilities, strengths, where I have weaknesses," Biden said last week.
Among the names that ring the most are those of three of her rivals in the primaries: Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Harris, a 55-year-old California legislator, was friends with the candidate's eldest son and shares a centrist ideology with Biden. Daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, incorporating her into the 'ticket' could bring diversity. But some on Biden's team still hold a grudge against Harris for her attacks on the candidate in the debates.
Leftist Warren, 70, the furthest woman in the primaries, endorsed Biden this week. Despite their ideological differences, the senator did not hesitate to answer affirmatively to the question of whether she would be his vice president. It could help Biden mobilize the most progressive section of the party. The centrist Klobuchar, 59, a senator from Minnesota, was one of the candidates who supported her on the eve of Super Tuesday - a key day in the primaries - and can boast of having prevailed over the Republicans in many counties who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
Stacey Abrams, 46, a former Georgia legislator, has long been talked about as a vice presidential candidate. In 2018 she lost her race to governor of the state, but gained national relevance. An African American from a deep southern state, and an activist against practices aimed at making it difficult for minorities to vote, Abrams would generate enthusiasm, but a lack of political experience is her weakness.
Among the names Biden has explicitly mentioned is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whom the candidate referred to as "one of the most talented people in the country." Michigan is an important state for Democratic victory, and the fight against the coronavirus has made the governor a rising star. Another governor, the one from New Mexico, also plays in the pools. At 60, Michelle Luján Grisham became in 2018 the first Latina to hold the highest authority of a State. Before, she was a congressman, very critical of Trump's immigration policy. Catherine Cortez Masto, 56, the first Latina elected to the US Senate, is a loyal candidate for Biden and would also strengthen her support among a Latino electorate that overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
