Joe Biden’s Long And Rocky Road To The Democratic Nomination

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16 Авг 2020, 15:45

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Joe Biden addresses donors during a virtual fundraising event at the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Del., on August 12. Biden will accept his party’s nomination at this week’s Democratic National Convention.

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Sanders and Buttigieg again virtually tied in New Hampshire’s primary on Feb. 11. Biden came in fifth, the choice of only one out of every 12 voters.

As Sanders and Buttigieg dueled for delegates, it was Sanders who got the biggest boost in the polls. His rise coincided with his big win in the Feb. 22 Nevada caucuses, where the avowed «democratic socialist» showed strong appeal among Hispanic voters and got nearly half the votes overall. Media reports were routinely referring to him as the front-runner.

But Biden stayed alive in Nevada, finishing second with 20%. It was enough to carry him to South Carolina and redemption.

Clyburn’s Crucial Contribution

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Joe Biden celebrates his win in the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29, 2020. An endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn (right) proved pivotal.

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Biden appeared at a news conference with his wife Jill in Washington on Sept. 23, 1987, to announce he was withdrawing from the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.

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If the Obama-Biden ticket saw itself as groundbreaking, the Biden-Harris campaign will cast itself more as a rescue mission from the Trump era.

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If the Obama-Biden ticket saw itself as groundbreaking, the Biden-Harris campaign will cast itself more as a rescue mission from the Trump era.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

How did Biden come back over time to bestride the party with such stature at this moment? Has Biden changed or have the Democrats changed, or is this a different country today?

In varying degrees, all three have changed. Often seen as garrulous and talkative in his Senate years, Biden has been more subdued in public during the current cycle. He has also seemed sobered by the pandemic and by the portents he sees in the governing mode of President Trump. That matured persona has played well in the current climate, at least among Democrats, large majorities of whom view the COVID-19 crisis as a major concern and share a sense of anxiety and dread about Trump.

The Democratic Party today is younger and less Caucasian than it was when Biden first contemplated a run for president. Biden will be the oldest nominee either party has ever had, and would be the oldest occupant of the White House ever on the day he took the oath. But the younger voters who preferred Sanders did not turn out in significant numbers during the primaries, a fact Sanders himself acknowledged.

And while Biden would seem miscast as the champion of people of color, he wound up benefiting most from their votes, which never coalesced around Harris, or Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey or Julian Castro of Texas – all of whom dropped out before Iowa.

This is also a more progressive Democratic Party, as shown by the success of Sanders’ two campaigns and the popularity of Warren’s stands in 2020. Ideologically, Biden has been generally moderate to center-left, and while he has moved toward Sanders and Warren on health care and other issues since becoming the presumptive nominee, big differences remain.

In the end, Biden had just enough connection, whether through his often-mentioned association with Obama or his ties to officeholders and other party influencers, to overcome his deficits.

And as the nation’s oldest political party gathers in virtual space for its 2020 convention, it is less a celebration of Biden, or Biden-Harris, than it is a concentration of opposition to the incumbent president. If the Obama-Biden ticket saw itself as groundbreaking, the Biden-Harris campaign will cast itself more as a rescue mission.