He is a whit man in his late 70s. He has been criticized for his handling of the Anita Hill hearings in the wake of the Me-too Movement. And he wrote a crime bill that led to mass incarceration of African-Americans.
Yet despite these factors Joe Biden may very well be the best Democrat to face off against President Trump. After all the tweeting and all the rallies and all the lies, what America may want more than anything else is stability. Nothing says stability more than Joe Biden. After four years of the chaos of the Trump Administration, boring may be the new exciting.
I see what's going on nationally as being very similar to what happened not to long ago in my home state of California. About 15 years ago, in midst of a recession and $20 billion plus deficits, Californians voted out Governor Gray Davis and replaced him with movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like Trump, Schwarzenegger was a celebrity politician with no government experience who vowed to clean up Sacramento. But after seven years of having a celebrity governor with no government experience, California voters realized they needed a governor with government experience and in 2010 elected Jerry Brown, who served two terms as California Governor in the 1970s and 1980s. As a former Vice-President who served for 36 years in the Senate, no other potential Democratic candidate for President has more experience than Biden.
Besides his experience, another factor that may work in Biden's favor are the debates. Can anyone ever forget Trump interrupting Hillary Clinton? Does anyone think Biden would let Trump get away with that? I can certainly imagine Biden turning to Trump and saying "excuse me Mr. President, don't interrupt me, I'm talking." After Trump's constant bullying, Democrats may want a fighter who would fight for them. When campaigning for Clinton, Biden even said that if he and Trump were in high school he would take him out behind the gym. Conservatives and Fox News might complain about Biden being too "mean" like they did after his debate with Paul Ryan in 2012, but the way you fight a bully is not to be nice to him but to punch him in the nose. Biden exemplifies a toughness that is rare in a politician, and certainly lacking in the President we have now. This is a man who lost his wife and daughter in a horrific car accident and lost his son to brain cancer yet kept serving his country.
I mentioned earlier the crime bill that Biden wrote that led to mass incarceration of African-Americans. Of course Biden needs to apologize for that and say it was a mistake, yet I still expect African-Americans to show up for him only because he served as VP under the first African-American President. No doubt Obama would stump for him, pointing to the glory years of Obama-Biden and all they accomplished-saving America from financial collapse, saving the auto industry, expanding health insurance to 20 million Americans, and killing Osama Bin Laden. Yes, Hillary Clinton did serve as Obama's Secretary of State, but she was abroad most of the time when she served under Obama. She wasn't by Obama's side the entire eight years. Biden was, so he he can claim credit for the success of the Obama Administration as much as Obama can. Besides African-Americans, women will also turn out for Biden. Despite his handling of the Anita Hill hearings, only the most die-hard female Trump voters will vote to re-elect a President who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy over the author of the Violence Against Women Act.
Perhaps the biggest concern voters have about Biden is his age. After all, he'll be 78 just a few weeks after the 2020 election, 86 after eight years. But Biden doesn't have to serve the full eight years. He could spend four years fixing the country and then step down to let someone else run. Alexandria Octasio-Cortez will be 35 in 2024 so she could run. This I believe would be the best strategy for a Biden campaign because a) it would make his age that much of an issue and b) it would let him focus solely on governing instead of running for re-election.
As of this writing Biden still hasn't made up his mind, but sources say he is leaning towards a yes. If he does jump in he'll face a Democratic primary field more diverse than any other in history, facing off against several female candidates, a female African-American candidate, and a Latino candidate. But I would bet that there is something America wants more than to elect the first woman president or the first African-American woman President or the first Latino President, and that is for the country to get its sanity back.
