Seven big things Biden got right
Opinion by
Columnist
November 2, 2020 at 6:45 a.m. CST
Rational
or not, those who fear four more years of President Trump are scared out of
their wits. They recall the horror and the feeling in the pit of their stomachs
when they realized that Hillary Clinton was going to lose the electoral
college. Naturally, Election Day 2020 triggers memories of all that and a worry
that because things went awry in 2016 they could go awry in 2020. Rather than
analyze each poll (which never alleviates anxiety since there is always another
poll, and then another), let’s look at what former vice president Joe Biden did
right to put him in position for a commanding win.
For
starters, the Biden team never bought into the view that the Democratic Party
had shifted far to the left, never confused Twitter with reality, and never
gave way to the temptation to chase Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.) to the most progressive end of the spectrum. Those who said
the Republicans in the general election would call any Democratic nominee a
“socialist” missed the point. In the general-election debates, Biden could look
into the camera and say, “I beat the socialist.”
He
could remind us he did not back Medicare-for-all. Trump’s cult would believe
whatever false allegation Trump spouted, but the mainstream media and a healthy
majority of Americans understood Biden was no Sanders. That made Biden an
acceptable choice for many centrists, Republicans, ex-Republicans and voters
who went for a third party in 2016.
Second,
in that vein, Biden understands that the far left of his party is
overwhelmingly White; his base of support and the bedrock of the Democratic
Party are not. He understands that African American voters in South Carolina
and elsewhere are more moderate than the flank of super-progressive White college-educated
voters and that they did not feel like they had the luxury to pick a candidate
with pie-in-the-sky progressive aspirations. This election was an existential
moment in which they were never ready to take a gamble. They knew Biden. They
trusted Biden. They were never prepared to abandon him. Biden in turn hung in
there through early defeats until South Carolina. He was right: Black Democrats
saved his campaign and propelled him to the nomination.
Third,
to not lose his progressive allies, Biden went out of his way after sealing the
nomination to be gracious to Sanders and to include him in policy discussions,
as well as to solicit advice from Warren and put forth a Build Back Better
agenda that included many items in the progressive wish list (e.g., child care,
minimum-wage increase, aggressive investment in green technology). Having
buttoned up his support on the left, he did not need to spend the general
election fending off progressive attacks. In this, both Sanders and Warren
deserve immense credit. They (and Biden’s other former opponents) gave their
all for him.
Fourth,
Biden’s team took advantage of negative stereotypes that he was a gaffe-ridden,
unfocused campaigner. The time “in his basement” helped as well, allowing him
to sharpen his focus, control media exposure and allow Trump to self-destruct.
However, with the exception of a moderate bobble on fossil fuel in the last
debate (cleaned up quickly after the debate and then overcome by events), it is
hard to think of a significant gaffe in the general election. The
“undisciplined” Biden remained on message to a degree that shocked many
Democrats.
Fifth,
Biden bet that he did not need to be a charismatic, exciting and fresh face. He
couldn’t be. If you had asked political reporters in 2019 if Biden had a
chance, most would have said no. Here a little knowledge was a dangerous thing.
Day after day they saw a lackluster debater and mediocre stump speaker whose
verbal acuity could not match other opponents. Biden grasped what political
reporters did not: Primary voters did not care about that, and virtually none
of them see entire speeches day after day. They wanted steady, safe and
electable. Unsurprisingly, the media’s obsession with style was not shared by
primary voters desperate to get rid of President Trump.
Sixth,
Biden chose Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate (not a bland
figure like Clinton’s pick, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia). Harris injected a
burst of enthusiasm, unleased a torrent of fundraising and gave the media the
telegenic, high-energy candidate they like to cover. She exceeded expectations
in the debate, ran an error-free campaign and, like her boss, stayed firmly on
a center-left message. The adage that vice presidents can only hurt, not help,
might be wrong in this case. She added plenty to the Biden campaign.
Seventh,
Biden understood that voters would be more impressed with adherence to safety
protocols than with big rallies. Big rallies, as many a candidate has learned,
are like lawn signs — indicative of virtually nothing. What is important is
local media coverage, which Biden accomplished with smaller events and local
media interviews. As Trump left thousands of covid-19 infections and hundreds dead in his wake
barnstorming with superspreader events, Biden remained the responsible grownup
more concerned about voters than his own ego.
Biden
and his team got a lot of big things right. Honesty, however, compels us to
acknowledge that his biggest advantage was that he was not Hillary Clinton.
Biden does not have to contend with the kind of irrational hatred Clinton
engendered, the seething misogyny, the scandals and the cultural resentment
associated with her candidacy — however unfair and exaggerated by the media.
Clinton gave Republicans and resentment voters (let’s stop calling them “values
voters” since they are driven by cultural and racial resentment) an excuse to
vote for Trump. (“I don’t like Trump, but I hate Clinton” was a constant
refrain.) Biden gives them no such excuse, so pundits and voters are forced to
concoct spurious and attenuated rationalizations
if they want to vote for Trump, rationalizations that tell us more about the
spinelessness and greed of right-wing media and racial convictions of the MAGA
crowd than they do about Trump or Biden.
In
short, Biden has done everything he could to make it really hard for rational,
sane and decent people to vote against him. And that is how you win — and win
big.