Biden vs. Warren: Who’s more electable?
The Democrats are facing a real dilemma, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. What if the party’s choice for a presidential nominee comes down to an extreme liberal who’s engaged in a “race to the left” to win over 20-something activists and a fumbling 76-year-old who looks “too old to handle the awesome task before him”? At last week’s Democratic debate in Houston, front-runner Joe Biden was initially vigorous, but as the night dragged on, his rambling answers became increasingly incoherent—even cringeworthy. In a response to a question about the legacy of slavery, he urged black parents, “make sure you have the record player on at night.” Unfortunately, Biden is blocking any other center-left Democrat like Kamala Harris or Amy Klobuchar from getting traction. Meanwhile, rising star Sen. Elizabeth Warren is embracing Medicare for All, reparations for slavery, and other radical ideas popular only on Woke Twitter. Surely, though, the Democrats can do better than a 70s retread like Biden, said Charles Blow in The New York Times. His widely mocked “record player” comment was a revival of the “paternalistic” 1970s notion that white social workers should instruct incompetent black parents to play their children spoken-word recordings in order to expand the kids’ vocabularies. To say the least, this is a “problematic” view for someone who wants to lead today’s Democratic Party.
Whoever leads the party has to beat Trump, said Timothy Egan in The New York Times, and that’s why the former vice president is still ahead in this race. After the debate, Biden’s support among Democrats in a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll rose
5 points from July, to 31 percent. What matters to these Democrats is Biden is a decent, “normal guy” who “bleeds empathy”—traits that give him “a persistent big lead in the polls over Trump.” Despite Biden’s age and a penchant for dumb remarks, that makes him the Democrats’ safest choice by far.
Don’t be so sure, said Robin Abcarian in the Los Angeles Times. Warren was as impressive as Biden was pitiful last week, and she surged to 25 percent in the NBC/ WSJ poll— up 6 points since July. The Massachusetts senator is a more authentic and passionate campaigner than anyone realized, and her “unwavering commitment” to working families may resonate with the blue-collar voters that Democrats so desperately need to win back. “Democrats need to stop talking about electability and focus on ideas, aspirations, and principles.” Some of Warren’s ideas, though, may give those voters pause, said Greg Sargent in WashingtonPost.com. It won’t be easy to convince the 150 million Americans who now have private health insurance to surrender it for Medicare for All. Still, Warren’s career-long focus on income equality and curbing the predations of corporations make her more “electable” than nervous centrist Democrats yet appreciate.
Warren has yet to be truly tested, said Jonathan Last in TheBulwark.com. In a crowded field, she can “hide the football” about the costs and downsides of her trillion-dollar plans to tax the rich, provide everything free, and completely transform American society. But what happens when the field narrows? The Democrats’ “worst-case scenario” is coming true, said Michael Goodwin in the New York Post. Every candidate but Biden is “probably unelectable,” and “the whole world can see that Biden is slipping.” With the primaries beginning in February, the party has only “five months to get its act together.”