Joe Biden is a test
Hello from not-yet-boiling-hot Doha! In this week's newsletter, I've got a piece on Joe Biden's entry into the race and reading suggestions. I'm also still processing the many fascinating discussions I had at a populism conference last week at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center, where I was invited to help lead a discussion on policy responses to the rise of global populism. If you have anything you've read on the topic — especially in the American context — that you've found particularly memorable, feel free to send it my way! I hope to discuss my takeaways in the future either here or for a magazine.
Joe Biden is a test
Joe Biden's freshly launched presidential campaign is devoid of any clearly stated vision or values other than Biden's conviction that he's eminently electable in a contest against Trump. This lazy minimalism is by design, and it's unpersuasive. Taking him down in the primaries will be a crucial test for the growing electoral power of the left.
If you haven't already, I urge you to check out Biden's campaign kickoff video.
It contains nothing about his personal story, his record, what he thinks a better America would look like, or how he'd get there. It is, instead, laser-focused on the idea that Trump represents an unprecedented threat to American values, and that his reelection would cause irreversible harm to the nation's character. Biden details Trump's reprehensible behavior after the Charlottesville clashes, declares that he can't "stand by" as Trump stains the country with his behavior, and invokes a Batmanesque civic obligation to intervene unilaterally to protect society from complete catastrophe.
Biden's video goes all in on the "electability" argument, skipping primary season messaging other than to say he's the best candidate to face off against Trump. To the extent that we're offered ideology in positive terms, it's a pledge to return to the pre-Trump status quo, the kind of America in which allegedly “there’s nothing you can’t achieve if you work at it.” On Tuesday he said that his motto would be: "Make America Moral Again."
Biden's messaging echoes Hillary Clinton's posturing in the period between the DNC in July 2016 and the general election in November 2016, during which she pivoted to the center to present herself as an establishment figure who would serve as a bulwark against a madman. Biden's "Make America Moral Again" clearly echoes the Obama-Clinton "America is already great" messaging from that time as well. It appears that once again, despite years of evidence that populist skepticism of the establishment is transforming politics both in the US and across the world, the leading establishment Democrat in the race is centering their pitch on a return to the status quo.
The one major thing that distinguishes Biden from Clinton is his identity — in particular, his blue collar sensibility and his affable, easy-going persona that is widely perceived among the pundit class as more "likable" than Clinton's wonky demeanor. (Embedded in the absurd "likability" calculation is, undoubtedly, the advantage of being a man.) In a race packed with dozens of qualified, ambitious, fresh-thinking candidates, Uncle Joe's math is as follows: Clinton's policy record and messaging + Obama nostalgia + Biden's alleged electability among white working class voters = victory in the primaries and over Trump.
Unlike all the other candidates in the race, though, we actually have seen Biden run for the presidency twice, and he didn't seem all that electable either time. In 1987 he ended his White House bid within months after the media discovered that he had plagiarized from a number of British and American politicians in his speeches and lied about his academic career. In 2008, Biden's everyman affect didn't help him win over voters in Iowa, where he came in 5th place and garnered under 1% of the vote, causing him to end his campaign after the very first nominating contest. During that primary season, he made some strikingly backwards remarks about Obama being "articulate and ... clean" and said you can't go into a 7-11 unless you have a "slight Indian accent." In other words, what we tangibly know about Biden's electability in presidential contests is that he's been ... unelectable, and that he's lacked the poise and control one expects of a serious candidate.
One thing that we know makes a candidate electable is adaptability, and so far in this race, Biden's behavior suggests he lacks it. Not only does seem either indifferent or opposed to the anti-establishment sentiment rippling through political life, he's also refusing to get on board with the kinds of social changes that directly affect his own viability with the party base. In response to new standards of male conduct in the era of #MeToo, he's refused to apologize for making many women uncomfortable with his famously invasive embraces, and he's refused to fully apologize for the way he treated Anita Hill when he presided over hearings about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' sexual harassment of her. (His claims that he did the best he could to help Hill at the time are complete bullshit.)
Final point on electability: most polls indicate that pretty much every major Democratic candidate nominated would likely prevail against Trump. If Biden's value proposition is that he's very electable, that doesn't separate him from the pack. It's also insulting to the democratic process that a politician would seek to capitalize on panic about an incumbent and neglect to come up with a serious plan for when they take office.
But the fact that Biden has huge vulnerabilities and performed very poorly in the past doesn't necessarily mean he isn't a formidable contender this time around. He has a very serious lead — with the post-launch bump, he's polling 20 points ahead of Bernie Sanders, who stands in second place, in the latest CNN poll. It's more than just name recognition — there really is a significant portion of the Democratic electorate, particularly older voters, who think at this point that he's either very desirable as a president or that he's the best weapon against Trump. And while Biden is known for making gaffes at astonishing rates, Trump may have lower voters' standards for propriety from a candidate.
Biden's candidacy is a major opportunity for the growing left-wing in American politics to flex its muscles and expose the limitations of the Democratic establishment during the primaries. Advocates on the left will have to organize effective demonstrations and protests to pressure him to answer for his conservative past. Left-wing candidates like Sanders and Warren will have to make the case for why white male moderates don't hold a monopoly on "electability" both in debates and at the polls. This all requires organization and mobilization, not just "canceling" someone online. We'll see who has what it takes.
What I'm reading
Guantanamo Bay as nursing home.
Joe Biden and the apologies that weren't.
The limits of a feminist politics of elite representation. "In a first-year seminar, I was introduced to the idea that my own hatred of Margaret Thatcher might be rooted in internalized misogyny. I remember the moment clearly, because it was so flabbergasting. No, I remember thinking, avoiding eye contact with the glossy-haired, poshly spoken undergraduate who’d leveled the indirect accusation. No, that’s not it."
John Berger's ways of being. Contains this delightful Berger quote that I wasn't acquainted with: “As soon as one is engaged in a productive process, total pessimism becomes improbable. This has nothing to do with the dignity of labour or any other such crap; it has to do with the nature of physical and psychic human energy…. Work, because it is productive, produces in man a productive hope.”
The Netflix show “13 Reasons Why” was associated with a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among U.S. youth.
The Instagram aesthetic is over. Trend-setters are in search of "authenticity."
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