Biden and Trump

The Democratic Party wants the presidential election to be about character, not issues. Speaking at its virtual convention, former vice-president Joe Biden presented himself as decent, loyal and, with some careful choreography, a reminder of what presidents used to look like. Up against Donald Trump he almost resembles the more conservative option, although his party’s record does not match the image.

Mr Biden is sold as a moderate; in reality, he is a weather-vane. He is almost the generic Democrat, centre-left when possible, centreright when necessary, with a history of wandering around on abortion, racial integration, crime, immigration and China. The record is long because he entered Congress at the age of 30 and ran for the presidency three times, losing out the first go when accused of plagiarising a speech by Neil Kinnock.

He won the 2020 primaries by moving substantially to the Left and is now the acceptable face of a Democratic coalition united largely by hatred of Mr Trump, in which the shots are increasingly called by radical young activists. Mr Trump intends to hammer this message home at his own, Republican convention next week, featuring speeches by citizens hurt by a summer of riots.

Under different circumstances, Mr Biden might well be cruising for defeat but for two developments: the coronavirus, which has destroyed Mr Trump’s economic miracle, and for Mr Trump himself, who has failed to expand his support beyond his base. He lost the popular vote in 2016 and won the White House via the electoral college, a narrow path that will be difficult to repeat a second time. Mr Trump wants voters to see him as the answer to chaos, but many regard him as the cause of it, and Mr Biden deployed a clever analogy of darkness and light, insisting that this election is a referendum on America’s core values.

Mr Biden perceives himself as a healer, yet casting the president as an almost demonic force is hardly conducive to national unity. The reality is that both parties have been radicalised, and Mr Trump is only in the White House because the Democrats lost the confidence of the American people four years ago, when Mr Biden was last in the White House. If this election is just as hard to call as 2016, it is probably because, once again, so many voters do not like the choice.