A leader through wrenching transformations
Joe Biden is more than just the stop-the-madness alternative to an unhinged incumbent. He has the potential to be a transformational president who guides the nation through an inevitable period of wrenching change.
If elected, Biden will be called on to lead a fractured America whose divisions were greatly worsened — but not created — by President Donald Trump.
In the years before Trump announced his candidacy, the country was already well on its inexorable way to becoming a majority-minority nation. A backlash against growing diversity had begun, and a reckoning with our long history of racism and injustice was inevitable. Millions of manufacturing jobs, especially in the Rust Belt, had already disappeared.
Rising inequality cleaved the nation into haves and havenots. The biggest urban centers thrived in the globalized economy while small towns and rural areas spiraled into decline.
Biden has lived through and learned from all these wrenching transformations. Most voters are too young to remember, but Biden was once the boy wonder of U.S. politics, winning a Senate seat at 29 and becoming the sixth-youngest senator in history. There was a time when his presidency was assumed to be inevitable. Then his campaigns fell short, and some of his views fell out of step with his party. But instead of receding into history, Biden rose to meet it. It is often glibly said that empathy is his superpower, but his understanding of the nation is genuine — and it is hard-earned.
Look at his evolution on race. As his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D- Calif., sharply pointed out in the first Democratic debate, as a young senator, Biden opposed mandatory school busing to rectify segregation that resulted from factors such as neighborhood demographics, rather than from obviously racist laws.
It took him time to understand what civil rights advocates already knew: that segregated neighborhoods didn’t just form organically, that decades of redlining, restrictive covenants and often-brutal intimidation kept African Americans “in their place” and out of areas where schools were strong and property values were rising. But Biden, who entered public service to fight for racial justice, did come to see that his early busing stance put him on the wrong side of history.
Biden also came to realize that the crime bill he wrote — and now calls a mistake — led to the unjust and tragic mass incarceration of Black and brown men for minor offenses. He understands both the need to get justice for victims of crime and to make it so the legal system does not re-victimize the people and communities most affected by it.
He went on to serve eight years playing an unfailingly loyal and supportive second fiddle to the first African American president, Barack Obama.
Biden’s credibility on race is now such that Black primary voters in South Carolina essentially secured his nomination. And the fact that he made this journey may help himnudge some angry and anxious Whites along a similar path.
On the subject of economic dislocation, it is hard for Trump supporters to dismiss Biden as some kind of snooty “elite” who knows nothing about them — whatever the president tells them to the contrary. Biden was born in Scranton, Pa., and has lived his whole adult life (except his years as vice president) in Delaware, a state that has seen its auto and steel industries contract or leave town.
The policies that Biden and a Democratic Congress pledge to enact would greatly benefit the White working class. Biden has a decent chance of convincing at least some Trump voters that a progressive economic agenda could work for them.
Many people might not know what a policy wonk Biden is at heart. This characteristic is important because of the damage Trump and his crew of vandals have done to the executive branch. Not only have they made it difficult for vital organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency to fulfill their assigned missions, but they have also perverted others like the Department of Homeland Security, using them to torment children.
Biden understands, in detail, how the government is supposed to work. He can fix it.
But Biden’s most urgent task, should he win, will be to deal with the deadly coronavirus pandemic that Trump first denied, then botched, and now seeks to ignore. Throughout the campaign, Biden has modeled the kind of behavior — social distancing, wearing masks — that will bring down infection rates and save lives. He will listen to scientists, not quacks.
When Biden talks about covid-19, he does so knowing what it feels like to lose a loved one. When he meets young people who stutter, he gives themhis private number so they can stay in touch.
He is, simply, a good man. What a wonderful change that would be.