Steve Benen sums up a critical decision former VP Joe Biden must make now that he’s a declared candidate for the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2020:
For Biden, Trump’s presidency is effectively a fluke. A historical accident. An “aberrant moment in time” that can be corrected with the election of a Democratic president who won’t necessarily turn back the clock to 2016, but who can at least restore a sense of normalcy and maturity to the White House, bringing an abrupt end to a four-year period of madness.
But for many Democrats, each of whom would welcome Trump’s departure, Biden’s assessment is a misdiagnosis.
For them, Trump isn’t the disease, he’s a symptom of a larger sickness. In this model, there’s a systemic rot in our political system, eating away at Republican politics, which made it possible for a racist television personality to rise to power in the first place.
Replacing Trump is an obvious prerequisite to better political health, the argument goes, but it wouldn’t remove the deterioration of our political foundation, without which Trump’s madness would have been impossible.
Source: Gallup
Trump’s approval rating within the Republican Party is sky-high. I think this invalidates the public Biden position, while confirming the position of those Democrats who disagree with him, as well as those independent observers who’ve been noting symptoms of a terminal pathology in the GOP for years now.
But is it wise, or better, politic, of Biden to switch his position? After all, no one wants to be told their political and intellectual positions are not only balderdash, but actually indications of a systemic mental illness. It just doesn’t go over well. If he wants to lure the bulk of the Republican Party back to, well, normality, the first step is not to spit in their faces.
On the other hand, Gallup polls also indicate that roughly 27% of US citizens answering another poll consider themselves to be Republicans (however, another 16% consider themselves “Republican leaners”). Worse for them, they are an aging demographic that, I think, is not attracting a lot of the younger generations, if this Pew Research research finding continues to hold true. Essentially, the current Republicans are part cult members and part cult leaders, and the younger set recognizes there’s something wrong in this dynamic and are avoiding it. Inevitably, the infection, as it were, will die out from old age, if not outright invalidation (which I suggest will happen to End-Timers such as former Rep Bachmann (R-MN) and half-term Governor Palin (R-AK) as their Biblical predictions once again prove wrong).
If Biden and other Democratic candidates choose to label to the Republican Party as being pathologically and systemically ill, independent voters will come to one of two conclusions. First, they just write it off as inter-party warfare and the Democrats get dinged for being bitchy.
Or, two, the voters decide to examine the evidence. In order for the Democrats to get that to happen, they have to get their messaging up to the task of informing the uninformed without alienating them, while keeping in mind that many voters don’t have time to do the research. It’s going to be harder than it sounds, because it’s going to involve absolutist propaganda from the GOP, as we’ve seen from Trump, that appeals to a lot of people, and they won’t want to reject it, no matter how pathological the entity might be. After all, absolutism is easy, nuance is difficult.
But I think, in the end, that Biden should probably change his position. It’s honest, it’s accurate, and it’s good for the future of the nation to practice honesty.
