Election 2020: Joe Biden Update

Ridin' with Biden: A Weekly Dispatch from the Campaign

By Christopher Sloce

Welcome to your first Ridin’ with Biden, wherein we trail Joseph Biden in what promises to be a completely normal race. I’ll not make my intro too long, but sometimes the intro will include some disparate thoughts about the race where I can’t fit them in the body. But we’ve got a ton to cover.

DEBATE NIGHT
Let’s be real: the idea of ‘winning’ a debate is pretty nebulous, especially as we’ve made the debate process closer to an episode of The Weakest Link. You can absolutely lose a debate, though. Biden lost. He walked into a buzzsaw when Kamala Harris brought up his past with anti-bussing and his constant ass-slapping with James Eastland and mainly came across as lazy. It was such a murder that we only had outside footage--for some reason, Kamala’s cam was off.

They got into a little spat from there about Kamala’s past of being a prosecutor with Biden asking her why she became a prosecutor and using it to shore up his past as a public defender. Of course, Biden is right: being a public defender is more honorable than being a prosecutor. The problem is Biden isn’t even oily, he’s like Kerrygold butter: Irish, soft, and yellow. Who knows why he was a public defender? All that anybody needs to know is that if he was such a bleeding heart, he wouldn’t be bragging that “every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the State of Delaware: Joe Biden.” That doesn’t mean you have to buy Kamala’s particular brand of bullshit, either, just that the source pointing out the stench wears similar lines. 

Probably the stupidest thing he said all night was that the first thing he’d do as President would be defeat Donald Trump. Yeah, no shit! How else are you going to become President? What else would you defeat him in, pinochle?  What else would he run on, really? Barack Obama? 

Debates are all spectacle, though. Like eating frosting for dinner, the thrills are all brief and you feel terrible later minutes later. I clapped my hands like some sort of idiot seal every time I agreed with a point, and when Pete Buttgieg did his tap dance to avoid being asked about the police shooting in South Bend and got called out immediately by Eic Swalwell, I was shouting, “Get him! Get his ass!” The next thing I know, I was calling him a dumbass for talking about a federal buyback gun program being handled by one of the most militarized police states on the planet currently locking kids up on the border (a measure I’m not totally against as long as they’re willing to destroy every single weapon in front of every single person that brings the gun in, otherwise it just sounds like liberal civil forfeiture--we’ll see what Kamala Harris says). I was like a little kid wondering if Hulk Hogan is going to weasel his way out of this one. 

 I’m not immune to the charms of a pie fight, though. Joe Biden couldn’t even bring seltzer water to spray anyone with. For all his trouble he got dropped by Tom McInerney, who warns more people may follow. 

WONDERFUL SIGNS!
So far, Joe has held 19 campaign stops and 23 closed-door fundraisers! Closed, as in meaning not open to the public! While saying things like, ““People feel like they’re being completely left out and they are...We just stopped talking to these folks.” Probably because ‘people’ don’t have access to the houses of ambassadors. 

A quick word on folks: I’ve never liked it. It reminds me of a Geometry teacher I had in high school who we invented a fake cocktail for that involved gasoline. The word is supposed to conjure up the idea of those close to the land rolling up their sleeves and ready to talk the issues of the day over one of those quilted checker boards while drinking some regional, fruit flavored soda pop called like Dr Smegma. Maybe if Joe Biden wasn’t holding a palaver with Chris Dodd and Evan Baynh, he’d have a little more credence to using the word “folks”.

Of course, in ways besides praising civility with Dixiecrats, Joe remains behind the times. The crowd is a powerful tool and can be either edifying or terrifying. What the Trump campaign did well was create that sort of crowd response to the point people were acting like they were seeing Kiss: a group tag to create identity (deplorables), a subculture of memes and jokes and swag. That’s why he continues holding these rallies. The mass creates its own organism and all of a sudden you’re shedding the social atomization that is becoming part and parcel of our lives. Of course, the operating agreement behind Trump is a version of the “stabbed in the back” myth; what you have in common with people is that America was great until x, y, and z. You have to counter that by telling a different narrative that people can shed their social atomization and become part of another organism.

The other mistake I see here is that the story of this primary so far so far has been small donors, which Beto used in his early-going before he was overtaken by Mayor Pete. I’d imagine most people don’t find raising 20 million impressive when the cumulative GDP of the room you speak is more than Australia. 


JOE AND THE BOILING SEA WATER
Amongst climate-minded voters, Joe Biden is currently the top choice, with Sanders and Warren trailing. It’s one thing to be mindful of something, it’s another thing to actually do it. Biden wants the country to be at zero carbon emissions by 2050, which is cute, seeing as last year all we heard was that we had 12 years. Too little too late. I have a lot of qualms with the Green New Deal (chief amongst them being there is no plan to approach the Pentagon, an institution that produces more emissions than several countries) but it at least understands how grave our current situation is. Biden, of course, will be long dead in 30 years, and I imagine I will end up floating in the gurgling sea water on his coffin like Ishmael on Queequeg’s. I alone lived to tell thee. 

JOE’S FANDOM
Let’s be very real: Biden is the front-runner here, and I’m bracing for him to be the nominee. In recent polling poll reported on by Politico, Biden’s made of teflon. None of his controversies have stuck, and he’s still at the exact same amount he was before. Of note are these two paragraphs:
After hearing about Biden’s comments on working with multiple segregationists, 41 percent of likely primary voters said it would make no difference to them and 29 percent said they would be more likely to vote for him. Just 18 percent said they would be less likely to vote for him.

I’d personally be interested to see how that pie chart breaks down.  There’s also this.

It’s the latest data point suggesting that Biden’s candidacy might be more durable than presumed — and that his campaign might have a more accurate feel for the mood and composition of the Democratic electorate than many of his rivals and critics.

Joe’s dickhead behavior might be a feature, not a bug, for plenty of voters. In that way, he may be the closest parallel to Donald Trump on the Democratic side. I don’t want “liberal Donald Trump”. I want his antithesis. 



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