Why Uncle Joe should worry Trump
The Democrats don’t usually do old and familiar, at least not when they win. The last three Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, were fresh-faced newcomers on the national scene.
And then, there are the party’s new obsessions. Class has been trumped by race and gender, and as a white male Biden is 0–2. Inequality is now less of a motivator than intersectionality, economic privilege less of a concern than white privilege. This was a stumbling block for the class-obsessed Bernie Sanders last time, and would surely hamper Biden and Sherrod Brown in today’s even more fevered context.
The Democrats are not set up to go with, in the derisive phrase, stale, pale, and male. Perhaps they can find another Barack Obama–type candidate who lights up the base while having just enough draw for working-class whites. There is also more than one way to win back the Blue Wall — higher black turnout could make the difference.
But there’s a good chance that Democrats will get consumed by the hothouse dynamic of their nominating process and select someone who, like those defeated progressive darlings of the midterms – Beto O’Rourke, Stacey Abrams, and Andrew Gillum – is better suited to going down in a blaze of glory rather than winning over an increment of Trump voters.
If so, Joe Biden will be one of the few people in American history who could have won two straight presidential elections — in theory.