Elizabeth … isn’t Joe

Joe Biden is the Democrats’ weak- est debater and strongest general election candidate. Joe debates about the same way Bob Mueller testifies. A couple of times the other night, he simply should have gone with the full Mueller and said, “I take your question.”

Or he could have said he’d like to use a lifeline and phone a friend, maybe Barack in Chicago, who probably wouldn’t have answered the ring.

Biden certainly started with confidence and vigor, asking Kamala Harris to go easy on him.

When she didn’t, basically calling him an old segregationist, which of course he isn’t, he flubbed a clearly rehearsed reply line. But he got bailed out by Tulsi Gabbard, who came in from the bullpen like a fifth-inning reliever and struck out Harris, who mainly was mad all night, on three inside-corner fastballs.

Then Biden ended the night in a Luddite flurry by confusing his website with a texting number. He left people wondering why his Internet site was Joe30330 and whether that took a dot-com or a dot-org.

What he meant was that you should text Joe at 30330. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was to tell him you intended to vote for him anyway, despite the debate and the fact that Elizabeth Warren is more alert and informed and energetic and commanding.

Maybe it was to tell him that you resist Warren as your hope against Donald Trump, considering that she’s trying the impossible parlay of running in the primary as Bernie Sanders to get to the general election to beat Trump.

If only she weren’t strung out vowing to abolish private health insurance and open the borders to undocumented crossings for receipt of the free health care that the rest of us don’t get.

The good news for Joe is that debates don’t matter, as evidenced by the fact that Trump is president and Hillary isn’t.

The prevailing Democratic mood is more to beat Trump than to go all-in for the liberal agenda.

The prevailing Democratic judgment is that Joe’s decency works better as a counter to Trump than Elizabeth’s liberalism or Kamala’s prosecutorial countenance or Bernie’s hair.

It’s that the American people think more highly of Joe’s association with Barack Obama than those other Democratic candidates who appeared the other evening. You’d think from some of the other candidates’ attacks on Obama policies that Barack had been the first black Republican president.

Always remember: Party presidential primaries are insular exercises inordinately influenced by the ideological bases. The more a candidate gets cheered in a primary, the more the candidate will get beaten up in a general election.

Warren is the cream of the Democratic crop both on policy, where she has command, and in political performance, where she has energy and confidence and a consistent vision.

If only she’d say that we need to make Medicare available to all as an option, a buy-in option rather than free, meaning with premiums, and that private insurance needs to be competed with and made to reform to survive but not simply killed by the government, and then if she’d add that she agrees with Beto O’Rourke that we need to reform our border policy and management to be more compassionate and fair and clear and efficient, after which we would of course continue to treat undocumented entry as a criminal law violation to be sanctioned … well, she’d be bound for the presidency.

But she thinks she’d lose her vital primary inroads to Sanders’ supporters.

That’s what she’s done, you know: She’s stymied Bernie, and, while at it, she’s cooled Pete Buttigieg’s momentum by being a more mature and conventionally qualified version— thoughtful, idea-rich and progressive with appeal to the wealthy white liberal elitists.

I think she will rise notably in the next polls, but she cannot win the nomination without black votes, and Joe and Kamala will probably lock those down.

It’ll become by March a conventional race with Biden leading while getting pestered by Kamala, and with Warren dogging Biden while getting pestered by Sanders.

That’s likely to remain the dynamic no matter how many times Joe stammers through a debate.

A prevailing plurality of Democratic primary voters will prefer his name identification, Obama association, compelling personal story, jovial nature and perceived chances against Trump.

That prevailing plurality will resent the mean way Elizabeth and Kamala and Bernie will be treating him.

By September 2020 all these leftwing assaults in these Democratic debates on Joe as a timid disciple of the dark ages of the Obama presidency— and the darker ages of the Bill Clinton presidency—will be long forgotten.

It’ll be a binary choice: Trump or not Trump.

Biden is a better not-Trump than Warren, because she brings her own strength. Joe just brings Joe.

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