Two-time presidential loser Joe Biden (shown), the former vice president, is the best man to take on President Trump in 2020, according to some leftists. And his allies aren’t the only ones who say it.
According to the New York Times, Biden himself modestly told backers that he is the best man to run against The Donald. And that, the Times reported, “foreshadows a clash between the veteran Washington insider and the more liberal and fresh-faced contenders for the party’s 2020 nomination.”
More liberal is one term for them. Radical left — much farther left than the 76-year-old pro-abortion Catholic from Delaware — is another description for them. Younger, hard left Democrats want the party’s white gerontocracy replaced with either black or Hispanic socialists who, frankly, are becoming the new face and radical voice of the party.
As the Times put it, “There is also a rising demand in the party for a more progressive standard-bearer who reflects the increasingly diverse Democratic coalition.”
Question is, will Americans at large be willing to put that “diverse Democratic coalition” into power.
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Best Man
That truth about Democrats’ striving for diversity does not deter Biden’s backers. “He has the best chance of beating Trump, hands down,” Delaware’s Senator Tom Carper told the Times. “On a scale of one to 10, that’s probably about a 12 for us.”
Repeated polling shows that Biden, along with communist apologist Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, leads the polls among Democrats.
Though twice-defeated, he’s ready to run again, the Times reported. The “former vice president told a senior Democratic official last week that he is both likely to run and that his aides have told him he must move quickly in this primary, according to two Democrats briefed on the conversation,” the Times reported.
During conversations over the Christmas holiday, the Times reported, “Mr. Biden repeated a variation of a line he has used publicly: ‘If you can persuade me there is somebody better who can win, I’m happy not to do it.’” But Biden, the newspaper continued, doesn’t see another candidate who can win.
Powerful Democrats are very likely to support a Biden run over the other dozens of possible candidates, not least because he can get along with Republicans. Carper noted, for instance, that Biden can get along with Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
But getting along isn’t good for the radical leftists who increasingly control the party and are becoming its voice. Representative Pamila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who helps illegal aliens file asylum claims that are very possibly bogus, compromise is unacceptable.
“We are at a time when we have a combative racist and often unhinged person in the White House, and that’s not going to be answered with somebody who says: Let’s come together and let’s heal and let’s all be gentle souls,” the Indian immigrant told the Times.
Not surprisingly, Jayapal backed socialist Sanders in 2016.
“In 2020, Biden-style centrism will become a toxic and losing brand of politics in Democratic primaries,” leftist Waleed Shahid told the newspaper.
As the Times put it:
Part of Mr. Biden’s challenge would be what he represents as a septuagenarian who came of age in a consensus-oriented Senate dominated by white men, some of them segregationists, a political milieu as distant to millennial Democrats as the Civil War.”
Should he run, Mr. Biden would quite likely face multiple major black candidates and no fewer than three prominent women. After the Democratic base elevated diversity to a first priority in the midterm elections, Mr. Biden would have little to offer voters determined to change the face of the presidency.
Warren, and Others
The question is which candidate will give Biden the most trouble. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts likely won’t get past her phony claims of Indian ancestry. And given the support for Sanders in 2016 — he was the last candidate standing between Hillary Clinton and the Democratic nomination — Biden’s softer, gentler socialism might no longer have a place in the party.
And again, he’s white, as the Times observed.
Biden will face younger, more radical minority candidates, including Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker and other minority candidates, who are ready for the white gerontocracy to step aside.
How will Biden and his backers, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, argue against the claims of minority Democrats that it’s time for new faces of a different complexion to reflect a newer “more diverse” country?
Looking at the insane policies from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk, an argument for pragmatism — who’s the best candidate to defeat Trump — might not work.
Photo of Joe Biden: LBJ Foundation
