Candidate Biden’s strengths are also his weaknesses | International

Humanity, empathy in grief, add or subtract? Almost half a century of political career, is it a baggage or a burden? And is the ability to build bridges, to reach agreements with political rivals, a virtue or a defect in times of polarization and cult of ideological purity? Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential nomination guaranteed last week after withdrawal from his last primary rival, Bernie Sanders, will provide an opportunity to verify it.

On November 3, in a country dragged into a brutal crisis by the coronavirus pandemic, a 77-year-old white man, oblivious to the new life that has transformed his party, will face the fury of Donald Trump with a series of strengths that are, at the same time, its weaknesses and its strengths.

Marked for losses

On November 7, 1972, Republican Richard Nixon achieved his reelection with a landslide victory. In the midst of the Democratic debacle, an almost unknown 29-year-old Joseph Robinette Biden won a seat for Delaware in the Senate, by the minimum and against prognosis. The joy would be short-lived for the young lawyer.

A few weeks later, when he was in Washington building his team, a truck was driving past the family car on a Delaware highway. His first wife, Neilia, and their daughter Naomi, just one year old, died instantly. Their sons Beau and Hunter, aged three and two, were injured. Joe Biden did not separate from his children until they were released from the hospital. Right there, in the room where his little ones were recovering, he swore his position as senator of the United States.

In 2015, brain cancer took her 46-year-old son Beau, then an emerging star of the Democratic Party. Before he died, he made his father promise that he would move on and not sink. A promise that would give title to his memories (Promise me dad) in 2017.

The candidate’s harsh personal history, which was about to end his political career, generates empathy in the electorate. It has been seen in the campaign. It did not draw crowds. There was no enthusiasm. But when he connected with his voters, he did so in a more personal and intense way than anyone else.

Two sound defeats

Politics, for Biden, It has been a kind of catharsis. A way of claiming, before the people and before himself, that he continues despite everything. But here too it has suffered hard blows. He lost two presidential races. The first, in 1987, was a veritable disaster that ended amid embarrassing accusations of plagiarizing speeches. He spent 20 years rebuilding his reputation and on his second attempt, in 2008, he fell under the power of the establishment that embraced Hillary Clinton and the charisma of Barack Obama.

Biden’s public and private life is largely defined by everything he has lost. For decades, the United States has seen him lose. His unsuccessful presidential careers are artillery for a president like Trump, the embodiment of the typical school bully who divides the world between winners and losers. But losing and knowing how to overcome connects with the spirit of the country. “There is nothing more American than that force, drawn from faith and the feeling of duty, to never give up,” said Blake Muller, a 50-year-old chemical company worker, at an act at the beginning of the campaign.

Half a century of experience. “He’s been around a long time, and that makes him the ideal candidate. If you get to the White House, you will be ready from day one. You don’t need a shoot to unite the country and regain lost international leadership, ”said Dawn Musgrove, 55, a cook, in a meeting with voters in Iowa. The argument is repeated among her followers. Eight years of vice president, 36 of senator. No candidate has been able to display comparable baggage. But that same public experience has generated a newspaper archive full of artillery for its detractors. In 1991, during hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ nomination, Biden chaired the all-male panel that patronized Anita Hill when accusing the judge of sexual harassment. The senator voted in favor of banking deregulation and the war in Iraq. Joe Biden, his critics defend, has been part of every mistake Democrats have made in recent decades.

Obama sought an older man with political weight to complete his ticket, and offered Biden the vice presidency. Biden brought up important issues in the Administration. Among them, arms control or the Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, after the great financial crisis. In May 2012, he spoke in favor of same-sex marriage, forcing Obama to announce his change of posture days later. He also dealt with thorny international policy issues, such as Ukraine, which would end up giving him problems. His troubled son Hunter worked for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, while his father led efforts to combat corruption in the ex-Soviet country. The willingness to investigate his adventures, in an unorthodox way, was what led Donald Trump to the impeachment from which he was exonerated earlier this year. There is no evidence of misconduct, but few doubt that the generous fees for this and other work by lobby Hunter Biden also paid the weight of his last name. An awkward stain for a presidential race, which has exploded and will undoubtedly explode Trump.

The nostalgia seller

The slogan of his campaign leaves no room for misunderstanding: “Retrieve the soul of the nation.” Little more. What Joe Biden sells is a return to the past. The biggest cheers at his rallies come when he mentions Obama. For his critics, Biden sells only a plate of leftovers. But many Democratic voters, especially African-Americans, cite his relationship with the former president and nostalgia for that Administration as the main argument for his support for Biden.

There are concrete policies that he will try to implement, no doubt, but what Biden emphasizes is that he is pursuing something bigger than that. It seeks to recover the values ​​of the country that trumpism has corrupted. A reasonable argument to appeal to a majority that negatively values ​​the president’s management, but perhaps insufficient to mobilize a part of the population that previously felt abandoned and demands a rupture like the one Trump embodied or the one offered by Sanders. The coronavirus crisis may have changed things. There is nothing that Americans want more today than to return to normalcy. The pandemic has given Biden the opportunity to shift his message from the abstract to the concrete.

A normal and (too) close guy

Biden’s family never fell into poverty, but neither did he avoid his attacks. Before moving to Delaware as a car salesman, his father had trouble supporting the family, and at one point they had to move in with their maternal grandparents. Put the “middle class Joe” in his ticket helped Obama expand his support. Biden does not have the skills to speak publicly of the last Democratic president. In debates he makes a mistake, messes up and gets stuck, a legacy of stuttering that he conquered as a child. David Axelrod, Obama’s political strategist, defined Biden in the magazine Time as “a porcelain candidate, to whom you don’t have to expose much.” But that fragility also has a certain charm among a tired electorate of politicians who seem to be mass-produced.

A trick of Biden is to present himself as a close man. But that warmth also has its delicate reverse. Shortly after this last presidential race began, he had to defend himself against accusations of unsolicited physical contacts in his interactions with female voters. He apologized and claimed that he is an empathetic person, but admitted that the standards have changed. The episode again underlined its distance from the values ​​of modern progressivism.

A pragmatic politician

Biden has been noted for his ability to negotiate with his Republican rivals. Something key in a system like the United States, in which only with great consensus (or with overwhelming majorities in the Capitol, today unlikely) significant transformations are achieved. But that same ability to compromise, particularly when the counterpart is someone as murky as segregationist Jesse Helms, has given arguments to his critics in the progressive sector.

“You don’t just have to fight,” defends Biden at his rallies, “you also have to heal.” He firmly believes in the value of consensus and insists on seeking meeting points with Republicans. It is not the preferred strategy of those who want a revolution, but it can be useful in key states with moderate voters. And it’s part of Biden’s seduction among the bulk of the Democratic constituency, for which preventing Trump’s second term is the top priority.

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