Joe Biden Should Sit This One Out

He’s not the right person for the Democratic nomination

Everyone is waiting on Joe Biden’s decision on a Presidential run in 2020. Democrats are growing impatient as he continues to push back his decision month after month. Biden is worried about his family being exposed to an ugly campaign. But the bigger question is should he run at all?

There seems to be a strong case for Biden running based on polling. He has led almost every public poll up until this point. It is still very early in the process so we should take the polls with a grain of salt. Is the 25–30% he garners his floor or his ceiling?

Biden has run for President twice unsuccessfully, once in 1988 and the other in 2008. In his first campaign, he did not make it to the primaries and caucuses. He withdrew due to multiple accusations of plagiarizing speeches. He didn’t have much political support and dropped out of the race just three-and-half months into the campaign. In the 2008 race, Biden at least made it to the first caucus in Iowa. He received just 1% of the vote there and formally withdrew.

His campaign in 2008 struggled to get off the ground due to the many gaffes he is known for. During the lead up to his campaign in New Hampshire, Biden spoke about his relationship with Indian-Americans:

I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian Americans — moving from India. You cannot go to a 7–11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.

I’m not sure how well these type of comments will play in 2020, especially when Democrats are supposed to hold the moral high ground against Trump.

During the Obama administration, Joe Biden became universally loved by Democrats. They dubbed him “Uncle Joe” and he could do wrong. Even today, his favorability numbers are solid and he will be one of the frontrunners if he does decide to run. However, when the debates begin and the past is resurrected, Biden will have a difficult time making the case for himself to be the nominee.

First, Biden has a questionable record when it comes to the crime bill from 1994. Not only did he vote for it, but he was also one of the Senators who wrote it and to this day, seems to be proud of that. We now know that bill resulted in record rates of incarceration, especially among younger people of color. In a 1993 speech advocating for the bill, Biden warned of ‘predators on the street’ who were ‘beyond the pale’. Pushing an earlier, even tougher version of the crime bill in 1991, Biden was proud that a newspaper proclaimed he wanted the death penalty for ‘everything but jaywalking’.

The next major issue Biden may face is his role in the questioning of Anita Hill in 1991 during the Clarence Thomas judicial hearing. He headed a committee of 14 white men who asked very skeptical and embarrassing questions to a woman who was allegedly sexually harassed by a Supreme Court nominee. This obviously won’t play well less than one year removed from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Biden has publicly apologized to Anita Hill but reports say that he has not personally reached out to her.

Biden has other troubling stances in the past, including siding with conservative Senators in 1975 against school busing and desegregation plans. Politico describes it:

Biden was at the forefront of this retreat: He had expressed support for integration and — more specifically — busing during his Senate campaign in 1972, but once elected, he discovered just how bitterly his white constituents opposed the method. In 1973 and 1974, Biden began voting for many of the Senate’s anti-busing bills, claiming that he favored school desegregation, but just objected to “forced busing.”

We don’t know much about the platform Biden is going to run on but my bet is that isn’t going to be very far to the left. He will be the centrist voice in the race. The problem is that the Democratic party has dramatically shifted to the left, mostly thanks to Bernie Sanders. It’s an uphill battle to take on Sanders one-on-one when Biden has to defend the less popular policies and beliefs.

Biden will have to make the case against Medicare for All and tell Americans they have to settle for the ACA, which still leaves 30 million or more Americans without insurance. He will have to convince voters that two years of free public college is better than four years. It remains to be seen where he comes down on proposals like the Green New Deal and a $15/hr minimum wage. Both are very popular with the electorate.

Also, Biden likes to push the idea of bipartisanship — something that really isn’t possible in today’s political climate. The New York Times said,

There is Mr. Biden’s penchant for praising Republicans, former segregationists and right-leaning columnists. Though aides say he will never back away from his belief in bipartisanship, Mr. Biden’s insistence on telling a story that centers on his relationship with former Senator Jesse Helms — a North Carolina Republican who never apologized for his bigotry — grates on even members of his own team, who have told him as much.

In what some would some call a stunning lack of political awareness, Joe Biden received $200,000 to speak to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan in support of the Republican representative Fred Upton. Democrats in the area felt betrayed that Biden would lend his support to a Republican who helped draft a bill in 2017 to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This wasn’t an unwinnable election for Democrats either. Upton won his 2018 race with only 50.2% of the vote. Biden decided to double down on the decision at a speech at The United States Conference of Mayors.

Joe Biden should do the right thing and refrain from running for President for the third time. His past will not sit well with voters and the party has simply moved on. Those warm and fuzzy feelings from the Obama years only last for so long. The bromance between him and President Obama can’t carry him to victory. Instead, Biden will be forced to make a case to Democrats that they can’t think big. Medicare For All isn’t feasible. Public college can’t be free for students. A Green New Deal is too ambitious.

It isn’t going to work. And just being anti-Trump certainly isn’t going to work, when every Democratic candidate is an upgrade from the current President. Biden doesn’t represent true change. He represents a return to the past. He is living in that past, believing working together with Republicans is still possible. Republicans are hell-bent on undermining democracy and gaining complete control of government and Biden wants to “meet them in the middle” somewhere. That’s not going to fly with primary voters.

Name recognition and being Obama’s Vice President has Biden leading in the polls now. However, his questionable past in the Senate, his affinity to commit gaffes, and the lack of a progressive platform is sure to sink his campaign. He should save himself the embarrassment and stay on the sidelines in 2020.