There’s now fewer than 100 days until the presidential election, America’s cities are still burning, and the 77-year-old challenger who has no idea what he is saying is thrashing the 74-year-old President who has no idea what he is saying. The Chinese must be quaking.
To working-class whites, he’s regular Joe, the Irish-Catholic boy from Scranton, Pennsylvania. To black voters, he’s Barack Obama’s loyal vice-president who’s always had that Clintonian knack of sounding empathetic. To suburban women, he’s the elder statesman who will bring back decorum to the Oval Office. To former Republicans and independents, he’s not Donald Trump. To tantrum-throwing revolutionaries, he’s a pushover-in-waiting. Biden’s campaign logo features his famous aviator sunglasses — and what could be more American? But those reflective shades are also quite a good metaphor for Biden’s candidacy: you see what you want.
His campaign is adept at sounding radical without committing to anything controversial.
Would he let the young radicals take charge?
Probably not. A quick look at the front ranks of the Democratic party offers proof as to how tightly the gerontocracy grips its power: in the House of Representatives, the speaker is Nancy Pelosi, aged 80; the majority leader Steny Hoyer is 81 and the majority whip (and key Biden ally) Jim Clyburn is 80. Retail politics is their modus operandi. Revolution is not.
What is certain is that Biden is willing to spend vast amounts of federal money. The Trump administration has already thrown $6 trillion at the Covid-19 crisis. Biden wants much more. ‘Whatever it takes,’ he says. He also proposes to increase government healthcare spending dramatically, and his answer to racism is more tax credits for black small-business owners plus a $100 billion fund for affordable housing for African--Americans.
The only hope that Biden will do better is, curiously, the lack of hope he brings. He is in no way burdened by the great expectations that accompanied the arrival of the first African-American president in 2009. Biden offers, at best, a dim memory of the optimism that Obama inspired — as well as the prospect of relative calm after four turbulent years of Trump. His election will be the democratic equivalent of a giant sigh.
Biden’s greatest strength is that, unlike Trump, he is widely held to be a good man.
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