One one level, this is the most insufferable horseshit:
White House hopeful Joe Biden doubled down on his vow to cooperate with Republicans should he be elected president, saying he successfully worked across the aisle as vice president.
“There’s an awful lot of really good Republicans out there,” he said Saturday at a Massachusetts fundraiser. “I get in trouble for saying that with Democrats, but the truth of the matter is, every time we ever got in trouble with our administration, remember who got sent up to Capitol Hill to fix it? Me. Because they know I respect the other team.”
Biden acknowledged that while Republicans and Democrats appear at odds on most issues plaguing Washington but said many conservatives are being “intimidated” to follow in lock step with President Trump.
“They’re decent people. They ran because they care about things, but they’re intimidated right now,” he told the fundraiser’s attendees.
Decent people don’t belong to organizations led by people like Donald Trump. Not for long, anyway. I am as tired as anyone of hearing Biden suggest otherwise. And I’d like him to produce an itemized list of the supposed breakthroughs he made with the Republicans when the Obama administration sent him down to the Hill to iron things out. He didn’t accomplish shit with those lunatics because it wasn’t actually possible to accomplish anything with them.
But, as grating as Biden’s routine is, I actually do think it’s smart campaigning. It feeds into a hunger a lot of Democrats have for a less winner-take-all kind of politics. It also chips away at efforts to paint Biden as a radical socialist who is out of the mainstream, so it’s a solid general election strategy too. I really do not believe that serving up partisan red meat is going to be a winning strategy next year, and when Biden does it, he’s going to make it about Trump rather than his party or his supporters. I think it’s pretty clear that this enables him to give permission to as many people as possible to vote for him, and that that is the smartest way to beat this president.
After all, Trump isn’t going to win a likability contest with Biden, nor with most of the other Democratic candidates for president. He’s going to try to bring his opponent down to his level and paint them as threatening to core, perennial Republican interests. He’s going to argue that he’s the only thing standing in the way of radical change that people won’t like, so his biggest problem is a candidate who promises a return to normalcy. Against that kind of campaign, his rhetoric will be unconvincing and ineffective.
Biden has a clear and sensible strategy. It’s low on risk because this is a very winnable election and why take needless chances?
Still, playing it safe brings its own kind of risk. Elizabeth Warren is catching up to Biden is some recent polls and may speed out in front of him. If that happens, his strategy could suddenly become a big liability because he’s isn’t positioned to run a come-from-behind campaign.
It could be that Biden is miscalculating about how much the Democratic electorate values normalcy over progress. His stupid happy-talk about “decent” Republicans is a giant turn-off to a lot of partisan Democrats. And they may have enough power to deny him the chance to use his general election strategy.
But, as grating as Biden’s routine is, I actually do think it’s smart campaigning. It feeds into a hunger a lot of Democrats have for a less winner-take-all kind of politics. It also chips away at efforts to paint Biden as a radical socialist who is out of the mainstream, so it’s a solid general election strategy too. How is it smart campaigning? What happens when he gets elected and doesn’t pass jack shit because Yurtle the Turtle bottles everything up again, which he will of course do whether as the Majority or Minority Leader? What happens if RBG passes… Read more »
“It feeds into a hunger a lot of Democrats have for a less winner-take-all kind of politics.”
I lost that hunger” long ago. In this day and time WE are the only ones playing that game. In Reich-wing world it’s – winner take all and crush the Dems into the ground. Crush their hopes, their dreams, and crush any accomplishment a Dems ever did regardless of the consequence.
So Republicans LOVE when Dems play the pansy card – just something else for them to take advantage of.
It just seems so weak. Like everything about Biden, really. Of all the top tier candidates, he’s the one I’m most certain the Republicans can tear to shreds.
I’m so scared we’re going to nominate him and doom ourselves to four more years.
Agreed. I have yet to see a clear argument demonstrating that Joe Biden is the most electable candidate in the Democratic field and his strategy completely undermines the campaigns of every other Democratic race in the country. Personally I consider him the most likely to blow a perfectly winnable election.
It’s a horseshit campaign, alright. Biden can’t take the heavy schedule that the rest of them are on. It’s not just gaffes. I’m worried that his age is a very real problem. He looks confused and tired a lot of the time. And it feels like his workers and staffers are trying to get by in hiding this from the public in an attempt to sneak through hoping no one notices how old and confused he is. It’s a disservice to the public and to the Democratic Party. To me it is like John Edwards trying to win the nomination… Read more »
Maybe. And remember, at the time Democrats had 59 votes in the Senate. Joe is proud of his ability to make deals with Republicans when Democrats had and overwhelming power advantage, plus public sentiment and yet were still losing battles to Mitch McConnell.
Right up front: My political affiliation is Anarcho-Syndicalism, which will probably never happen, and will never happen in my lifetime. That said, even though I’m way to the left of 99.999% of the population, I align, obviously, with Democrats. I’ve been a supporter of Sanders and Warren since hearing of both of them over a decade ago, and I believe that either, if cloned and placed in the House, Senate, White House, and USSC, would almost immediately make this country better. In 2016 I voted for Sanders here in Georgia, which Clinton won. On this blog (previous blog site) I… Read more »
My log in rarely works and I dont like that paywalled posts are not clearly marked. A few other reasons I dont come around much. I am also against anarcho-syndicalism. Big difference this time around is everyone is playing fair enough so far. Also you can say Biden is a bad candidate without people trying to rip your throat out. TPM is still a hotbed of Bernie-hate but thats to be expected since its run by a Clinton fanboy like Marshall. Big reason is that its still too soon for me to go hardcore into this and my kid is… Read more »
Biden may have a good general election strategy, but I don’t think it is one that has coat tails or provides impetus for flipping the Senate. Because if he is out there saying that only Trump is the problem then voters can rationalize keeping their Republican rep or senator. But if the problem is with republicans as an anti Democratic force, – which IS the problem, then that needs to be hammered home in every speech. Biden has positioned himself as the one person who cannot push that narrative.
Exactly. I’m no one, but if I was the candidate, my main message would be: If you think the world the Republicans have created over the past 40 years is working alright (government(s) they’ve been running in Congress, State Governments, and the White House) then vote Republican. If you want a better world, vote Democratic down the ballot. Not just for me, but for every Democrat on the ballot. Because things need to fundamentally change (then be honest that while political doubters may not agree with every policy, policy will change if/when things work or don’t work, that they aren’t… Read more »
And the first thing out of his mouth after getting elected will no doubt be to repeat Obama’s foolish dictum of “looking forward, not backward…”, which will guarantee further lawbreaking and norm breaking on the part of Republicans, and also risk enabling outright fascism if they seize presidency back.
Biden may have a good general election strategy, Playing it safe is never a good election strategy, particularly not when there is so much tension in the country. Safe doesn’t cut it when we’re having mass shootings and marches by Neo-Nazi’s a couple of times a week. Safe doesn’t cut it when we’re deliberately inflicting trauma on children at the border purely as a strategy in a racist immigration policy. Safe doesn’t cut it when a party is constantly working to strip health insurance from millions of people. A good election strategy is to convince voters that you have a… Read more »
Why would anyone with half a brain think that that Republicans are interested in anything other than obstruction.
Joe Biden is suffering cognitive decline, and nominating him would be a disaster for both the democrats and the country. Right now it’s become likely that, if he were nominated, his problems would become obvious in the general. Right now the media are ‘soft’ on him, because they want a primary horse race (and they are scared shitless of a POC nominee), but once the general comes along, they will pile on his issues…..if only to be appropriately ‘both sides’, but also the increased stress and work of a general election will make his troubles obvious. Right this minute, the… Read more »
I think that you may be right, both about Biden, and Warren. And I write this as someone who believes that Biden’s positioning closer to the middle is the better election strategy. But…that is immaterial if he can’t run the distance.
The decline is as obvious as Trumper’s personality disorder was/is. Does anyone imagine that harping on this won’t be a main beam of the National Trumpalist campaign? “Old, Old, Old Joe!” “I got the nursing home number right here, Joe! Memory care unit, too!”
And the Biden Perpetual Gaffe Machine will only legitimize it! And how in hell do Biden’s handlers “protect” him from the 24/7 slog of a prez campaign? Do a reprise of Harding’s “Ohio Front Porch” schtick, ala 1920? The Grampa Joe Social Media campaign of 2020, haha? “txt to GrampaJoe.com!” Uh, Joe….
Biden and Lizard Brains. Yes, I took the pledge as it says on FB: I will vote for a ham sandwich if nominated by the democrats, that includes Joe, or Sleepy Joe. But I’d be lying if I didn’t add there is no joy in that. Bipartisan Joe is likely to watch the further loss of our safety net, perhaps at the first time we reach the debt limit and Joe needs to negotiate his way out of it perhaps with reductions in health care. And that will be matched by corporate provided health care. More profits you know. Moscow… Read more »
Thanks for your comment. Just curious: why do you think Trump “seems to have an infinitely expanding base”? From everything I’ve seen, not only has his base stubbornly failed to expand over the last 2-3 years, it’s shrunk significantly in some states like NH, MI, PA, TX, & WI that are critical to his chances next year.
Here’s hoping you are right. But his approval or disapproval seems to stay about the same no matter how many lies he tells. And most of his support comes from those who have little interest in those sort of things. Call them the aggrieved. I suspect there are plenty more just like them, And once he has an opponent he is really good at calling them names that fit like Sleepy Joe and making them foolish looking, I don’t know about all those states, excepting Texas which I hope is in play, but Pa is critical. So I think he… Read more »
Me too! And there’s reason for hope (and therefore, to continue working hard): Trump’s approval ratings among registered voters are down in PA, and pretty much across the board: “Civiqs shows the president’s net approval ratios being underwater (i.e., negative) in 10 states he carried in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. If that were to represent how the 2020 elections turn out, Trump would have a booming 119 electoral votes. And it’s not as though he’s on a knife’s edge between victory and defeat in all these Trump 2016 states where he’s… Read more »
Winner-take-all means House, Senate, and Presidency, and the Dems have had a whopping two years of that so far this century, and no, we are not tired of it yet, not by a long shot. Anything less means another four years of GOP obstruction, and that we are sick and tired of, and by god I will dangle that preposition if I feel like it. Nominating Biden would be like nominating Clinton again. I think we can do much better with someone with a little more zest for life, by whom I mean Warren. If all the Dems vote for… Read more »
Thanks for your comment. There are a couple of encouraging factors (for me) about this Democratic primary contest: 1 – the quantity and quality of talent—almost every candidate is head and shoulders above Trump, both in terms of their public record, and in terms of their skills. It’s kind of amazing that quality candidates like Booker, Bullock, Castro, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, and Klobuchar can’t (so far) get any attention. 2 – though it’s unlikely the Dems will win control of the Senate, *if* they did, then any Democratic president would sign into law pretty much any & everything passed by the… Read more »
“2 – though it’s unlikely the Dems will win control of the Senate, *if* they did, then…”
We need to work our collective asses off to make that happen. Notice I did not preface that thought with “try.”
Here’s the thing about Biden’s strategy: as Martin says, it’s not necessarily a bad strategy, especially for Obama’s vice-president. Remind everyone of Obama’s accomplishments, say you were his right-hand man in every fight (even hint that you were ahead of him on some of them, e.g., marriage equality). Say you’ll restore dignity to the White House, and that flip your record of working with segregationists to your advantage—“I even worked with the likes of Strom Thurmond when it was good for the American people, so I’ll for doggone sure work with McConnell, et al, when it’s good for the American… Read more »
We need to get the Dems and minorities to the polls so why come out for an old man who promises to work with racists and Moscow Mitch and who is gaffe prone.
We agree (I think) on Biden’s weaknesses as a campaigner. I was just making the (at this point, largely theoretical) argument that Biden (or someone else in his position) has a record that *could* be turned strongly to his advantage as a candidate.
Biden’s problem (so far) is that he isn’t doing that. Worse, he (again, so far) shows no sign of figuring out how to do that. Instead, he keeps finding ways to use his record in ways that highlight his weaknesses as a candidate.
As further evidence that Joe Biden’s strategy (win the election by convincing sensible conservatives to cross the aisle and vote for a moderate Democrat) is doomed to failure: Mark Sanford Says He’ll Still Vote For Trump Over Any Democrat Even Though He Doesn’t Deserve Reelection Republicans will overwhelmingly vote for Trump, no matter how awful they think he is. Anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 is very likely to vote for him again. Democrats will win by motivating their base and by activating the millions of people who typically sit out presidential elections. Biden’s general election strategy is terrible,… Read more »
Thanks for your comment. We agree that “anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 is very likely to vote for him again.” Trump’s vulnerability (and he knows it) is that’s not enough for him to win in 2020. 1) The vast majority of people who voted for Hoover in 1928 voted for him again in 1932. He lost in a landslide because losing even just 10-15% of your base is disastrous for a presidential candidate in US politics. Run the state numbers from 2016 but subtract 10% from Trump’s popular vote totals. In that scenario, Clinton wins the electoral college.… Read more »
“flipping” one persuadable voter is worth more than persuading an infrequent (but reliably Democratic) voter to vote. I agree on the math, except that there are far fewer persuadable voters than there are infrequent voters, and they are far more likely to simply sit out the election than to flip. Even if they vote for Joe Biden, they are far less likely to vote for a Democratic Senator or Governor, so it’s a high-risk, low-reward strategy. Even given your 10% scenario, (which is extremely optimistic, not “even just”) you’re getting at best 6 million votes. For comparison, there are close… Read more »
Question is for how to do this, though. Persuasion was a significant part of 2018 gains. Where I typically disagree with the people focused on persuasion is how to do it. Personally, I don’t think you do it like Biden is doing it. You don’t need to tell these people lies about Republicans to get people to switch. Trump is doing all the work for you! Reap the rewards of negative partisanship and beat the snot out of Trump, Trump, and mention Trump again. But then connect his corruption and enabling to the Republicans in charge. Don’t talk about voters… Read more »
As the front runner, its disturbing the extent that Biden’s campaign is a rerun of Clinton’s 2016 run. The out-sized focus on attracting “conservative” voters didn’t help the overall GOTV effort of democratic voters. That democrats are willing to do this again makes me question what, if anything, did they learn from 2016.
This is what Biden is telling us he will reprise if he’s president: “Long story short: Reid’s strategy would have at worst produced a slightly better deal than Biden negotiated had McConnell accepted his final offer before the cliff (a slightly lower threshold for the new top income tax rate and a one-year suspension of the sequester rather than a two-month suspension). At best it could have produced significantly more revenue (closer to a $300,000 threshold) had we briefly gone over. But Reid never got the chance to execute it. ‘Their guys were running around asking to be forced to… Read more »
More along the same theme: “2020: It’s the Trumpism, stupid” “Although Trumpism has been an effective rallying cry for the GOP base, it has galvanized a previously complacent part of the electorate; white, college educated millennial women as well as all voters under age 40, who represent a far more diverse and liberal voter universe than their older counterparts. As such, any district with high levels of college educated voters was extremely vulnerable for Republicans in 2018, even those that had long been in the hands of the Republican Party such as the six Orange County districts in Southern California… Read more »
“There’s an awful lot of really good Repubs out there[!], by cracky!” He really just said this (without naming names). Would he actually name the Gravedigger of Democracy as one of the “really good Repubs”? Cruz? Corndog? Graham? Has he noticed the House retirement raft? This is really Grampa Joe’s conclusion, circa 2019, after those “really good” [pre-National Trumpalist] Repubs destroyed Obama’s presidency and wrested legitimate control of the Supreme Court from Dems? Jeebus. This isn’t a strategy, smart or not; he believes it! He thinks it’s the truth! And that renders him delusional, as well as being a totally… Read more »
Hillary of course actually did win the popular vote — and I don’t understand why Democrats have not been shouting “Hillary was the popular one!” throughout Trump’s term (and particularly every time the NYT ran another story about working class Trump supporters). The Dem nominee will get all of Hillary’s vote again, plus I hope a greater “enthusiasm” factor than she was able to generate. Though incumbent presidents have huge structural and actual advantages, I really hope for an enthusiasm factor to overcome this. If Warren comes from behind and takes the nomination away from Biden, it will be because… Read more »
‘“They’re decent people. They ran because they care about things, but they’re intimidated right now,”’ While perhaps true, it’s the wrong message for this time. We will need reconciliation abroad. At home, the Republicans (and conservatives in general) need an ass-whipping. Probably frequent ones. The upcoming election has got to be about Republicans as a whole making this mess, not just the convenient buffoon in the White House. On the other hand – unintimidated never Trumpers (or no-more Trumpers) and conservatives who’ve given themselves an ass-whipping – Welcome aboard! The only ones whom I know “care about things” are the… Read more »