Is Joe Biden’s Problem More Than The Sum of His Gaffes?
As the summer of 2019 turns into fall, the race for the Democratic Presidential primary still seems to be Joe Biden’s to lose. Buoyed by his status as VP to a popular President, his folksy and affable demeanor, and the fundraising success, “Amtrak Joe” has seemed to be cruising. He has never trailed any of his myriad rivals in a national poll, and has consistently led in the critical early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa as well. And yet, his frontrunner status has always had an overhanging sense of fragility to it. Anyone familiar with Biden’s career knows that verbal gaffes and miscues would be an inevitable feature of his campaign, but that has been the least of his worries. A greater cloud hanging over his campaign have been the accusations of being too cozy with segregationists, and a general sense that his time has come and gone, that a nearly eighty year old white man is not the ideal challenger to Donald Trump in the year 2020. Going into September of 2019, his polling lead is nearly identical to that of Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama and John Edwards in the fall of 2007. Will Biden suffer the same fate as she did?
Joe Biden’s gaffes have always been a part of the charm. For a politician who had been in Washington DC for nearly forty years even before being selected as Barack Obama’s running mate, the fact that he was prone to inopportune, sometimes embarrassing comments somehow made him seem like the working stiff from Scranton that he, in truth, had not been since the 1960s. And besides, had America just not elected Donald Trump, the man caught on tape bragging about sexual harassment? What could Joe Biden possibly say that could compare to that? While he may not have had one monumental gaffe so far, his campaign has been plagued by a series of missteps that, while not fatal individually, may start to take their toll on his campaign in the months to come.
It is a common saying in politics that the only gaffes that really hurt candidates are the ones that confirm a negative impression that people already had about them. Such was the case with Mitt Romney’s “forty seven percent” comment, confirming in the minds of many Americans that he was an out of touch plutocrat who “loves to fire people” (another, similar Romney gaffe). Trump has been the anomaly in that his taped comments indeed confirmed but many thought of him, but to no matter. Biden has made two significant gaffes so far in this campaign season; neither of them have sank his position in the polls yet, but each with the potential to do lasting harm to his campaign. While less obvious than Romney’s or Trumps, both of these gaffes may confirm to some bad old tropes associated with Biden that may have been lurking beneath the surface, only to emerge and plague his campaign again.
Biden’s first major gaffe of this campaign season was born out of an impulse that had served his former running mate so well- the instinct to elevate bipartisanship as the central virtue of political life. In June of 2019, Biden reflected on his relationship with the late Senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, both of whom were stauch segregationists opposed to civil rights. Biden spoke positively about his strong working relationship with them, musing “”We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done… but today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
Biden’s comments showed him to be out of touch, not necessarily because his instincts on race are relics of sixty years ago, as rivals such as Cory Booker and Kamala Harris quickly attempted to imply, but because his instincts on politics are relics of ten years ago. After eight years of Barack Obama trying and failing to find common ground with intransigent Republican leaders such as Mitch McConnell, and then the rise of Trump, 2020 Democratic primary voters do, in fact, see the other side as the “enemy.” Polling shows that nearly fifty percent of Democrats would be unhappy if their spouse married a Republican. Democrats want a crusader in 2020, not a conciliator. Biden was on the right track when he was challenging Trump to a fistfight back in 2018.
Biden’s other notable recent gaffe also hearkened back to troublesome “isms” from his past; but instead of race, this time it would bring back memories of plagiarism. Towards the end of last month, Biden regaled a New Hampshire crowd with a moving tale about a trip he made into a dangerous region of Afghanistan to recognize the heroism of a Navy captain. The only problem- the trip never happened. Those familiar with Biden’s early political history will recall his bid for the Presidency in 1988, when he went from frontrunner status to dropping out almost overnight due to having been found to have plagiarized his stump speech from that of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. It would be absurd to suggest that this story will have a similar impact in 2019, however the parallel that comes to mind is a similar incident that occurred with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2008. Clinton told a story on the campaign of how she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia while paying the war torn country a visit in the 1990s. The reality, however, was not exactly what the former First Lady had depicted. It should be noted that, at this point in the 2008 cycle, Clinton held an even stronger lead over competitors Obama and John Edwards than Biden does now, although “Snipergate” did not occur until later in the campaign.
I don’t believe that any individual gaffe or misstep will sink Joe Biden’s campaign. So far, the evidence seems to bear that out- he soldiers on along the campaign trail, his lead in the polls seemingly as steady as ever. But Hillary Clinton’s lead in 2008 seemed even more secure, and we know what that result ultimately was. In choosing their next President, Americans tend to look for the opposite of the current White House inhabitant. The distant patrician George H.W. Bush was followed by Bill “Slick Willie” Clinton. He in turn gave way to the brush-clearing, sober Christian George W. Bush, then on to the erudite, composed Ivy Leaguer Obama and finally the brash, impolitic Donald Trump. Joe Biden is many things, but the stylistic antithesis of Trump he is not. Worse than any one comment he could make is the possibility that each time he speaks, the sum of what he says, for better or worse, will continue to remind voters of that fact.
