How Biden Can Win

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POST I’VE EVER WRITTEN ON THIS BLOG, AND ONE OF THE SHORTEST. PLEASE READ IT.

OK. I get it now, at last. Joe Biden is our candidate. Period.

Four months is too short a time to introduce anyone new to the 81 million voters who voted for Biden in 2020. And anyway Wes Moore, while immensely promising, is too green and doesn’t even want to run. My bad for having touted him at this inopportune time. Mea culpa.

But Moore has something that Biden can have but doesn’t yet: a vision. So did all three of our living Democratic ex-presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

All three were almost complete unknowns nationally when they ran for the top job. Jimmy Carter was an unknown peanut farmer who had become governor of Georgia. He ran, and won, on a vision of healing the wounds of Watergate, easing the sting of the Nixon pardon, and bridging the deep divisions of the Vietnam War.

Bill Clinton ran on a vision of compromise and accommodation. He accommodated welfare critics by reforming welfare, and he let Wall Street and the good times rip with the bill that eventually produced the Crash of 2008. I think it was a bad vision, disastrous for our nation and our Party. But it got him elected, twice, from a standing start as a two-time Governor of Arkansas, hardly the brightest star in our fifty-state firmament.

Barack Obama is the strongest example. He had been a state senator in Illinois and was in his very first term as a United States Senator. Four years before his 2008 run, he had burst into public recognition with his world-beating keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Like Clinton, he had promoted national unity and harmony, but with a call for a “United States of America,” not a “red America and a blue America.”

Unlike Clinton, Obama did not compromise progressive principles to win. And unlike Bernie Sanders, he was smart enough never to use death-spell words like “socialism” to describe them. He just described them in functional, practical terms, cause and effect.

And so, despite the most godawful, mean, openly racist Republican opposition of my 79 years, Obama was able to make the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) law. Now over 40 million people have health insurance under his vision. For many of us, his being our first Black president was an unspoken part of his vision: a nation in which things like that no longer matter.

It may hurt to acknowledge it. But in some ways Trump is just like Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama. He was a newcomer with a vision. His vision is right there on all those annoying red caps: “Make America Great Again.”

It doesn’t matter that it’s totally non-specific. It doesn’t matter that it implies we’ve lost a bit of our luster. What matters is that it’s a vision: a simple, easily digestible call to something better. It’s a look to the future, not the past, and it sticks in your mind. And if you can put aside your loathing for the man, you have to admit that it’s a positive goal.

Trump has other visions, too. They are not all so positive, but they strike chords far beyond his conservative (some would say “reactionary”), often rural base. They include: bringing good jobs back onshore, pushing China back, strengthening Christian religious belief, providing government support for religion, supporting traditional marriage and traditional sexual roles, stopping illegal immigration, a bit of coddling (if not supremacy) for disgruntled whites, and supporting traditional values generally.

All of these visions have a distinct flavor of nostalgia about them. So they are immensely attractive to a largely aging population. And older voters vote more reliably than others.

The contrast with Biden is stark. Biden has accomplishments. You can assemble a whole list of statutes and executive and agency rules and orders for which he’s responsible. Each of them has made life better for millions of people. Together they add up to trillions of dollars of investment by government in our people and our future.

But all together—and even with all those dollars—they don’t make a vision. They are by definition parts of the past, not the future.

Biden also has character, empathy, experience, and good judgment. These shine through, despite his lifelong difficulty speaking clearly and his recent difficulties with an aging memory (something all my age know too well). And on his worst day, Biden’s character is infinitely more desirable than Trump’s.

But character, too, is not a vision. It’s a personal attribute, not a compact source of inspiration or a map for the road ahead.

As we approach the most consequential election in our nation’s history, you could say that the odds are against us. In 1992, Bill Clinton came out of nowhere, to beat George Herbert Walker Bush, who was a competent, experienced, effective sitting president, and who had also been a Vice President, CIA Director, and UN Ambassador. In 2008, Barack Obama came out of nowhere to beat a distinguished long-time US Senator and universally acknowledged war hero, John McCain. In both cases, a key winning ingredient was vision.

In my view, Joe Biden has none right now. His “vision” is his good character, the long list of statutes, orders and regulations that he has pushed for and signed, and the column of numbers of dollars that they represent. None of that is a vision. To many voters, it’s all as dry as dust. The details are quickly forgotten, and the tone is as inspiring as reading a dictionary.

Joe needs a vision, and he needs it fast. Fortunately, a vision is much easier to conjure up than a national reputation for someone with none.

Maybe our Democratic Party needs a Frank Luntz, but one who works for the angels, not the Devil. Maybe our three living ex-presidents, together or separately, can help Joe create a vision in time to avoid the destruction of our democracy and our Republic. They, Joe, and we all have less than four months.


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