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Nothing dates so much from a period as the uniqueness of its scandals. In 1987, the unattributed use of rhetoric by a British politician was enough to scuttle Joe Biden’s first run for the White House. Looking back, only the content, not the fact, of what we might call this copyright infringement was interesting.
The “first in his family to go to college” was playing the common man against a golden American president. The class was his subject in a country that sometimes tries to transcend such things.
Trade Donald Trump for George HW Bush, and Biden will resume the unfinished business of 33 years ago. There is enormous pressure on the Democrat to commit to the cultural schisms of the moment: on race, policing, freedom of speech, and what it means to be male or female.
President Trump tried to lure him into this tense ground in Cleveland, Ohio, where the two men “debated” on Tuesday. But Biden insisted on another kind of division. He referred (when the president took a deep breath between interruptions) to “millionaires and billionaires like him.” Trump, he said, only encountered suburban life when he “took a wrong turn.” He and those around him “despise people who have no money.”
If Biden wins the presidential election in November, his campaign will be studied as a clinic in message discipline. It has avoided, as far as possible, the culture war. But she is willingly plunging into the nation’s economic rift. When asked about Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s supreme court nominee, Biden pointed to the threat to the Affordable Care Act before the precariousness of abortion rights.
He has what could be the most redistributive platform of any candidate with a good chance of winning since the 1960s. He published his own tax returns before the debate to contrast with those recently leaked by the president. No gesture so vivid or political so bold has been presented in matters of culture.
Material problems
Even the most humanizing part of this longtime politician’s story, his experience of grief, is rarely broadcast. That would deviate from the core issues of health and economic security. This can lead to a dry candidacy. My profession is sometimes prompted by Biden’s frankly impertinent refusal to run the kind of campaign we want. How strange that he has led the primaries and then the national elections for most of the last two years.
He has maintained this focus on material issues during America’s most culturally feverish period for half a century. The police murder of George Floyd, the protests across the country, the death of the feminist lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg – few female candidates have had more reason to base their campaign on issues of identity.
Indeed, Biden was clear in the debate that racial inequalities spoil America. But you are also informed of surveys and focus groups. He knows that voters prioritize the economy and health above everything else (the coronavirus pandemic is linked to everyone).
That includes the increasingly obscure question of the integrity of the elections. For liberals who follow politics, Trump’s most self-condemning moment of debate was his circumlocution over whether he would accept defeat. But to the average voter, for whom stories of electoral ruse can seem like such a complex process, the president’s most revealing solecism was probably something else. Media folks seek fiscal efficiency, he said, “unless they’re stupid.” If Biden can’t cash in on that, he shouldn’t be in the politics game.
Evidence from the past six months suggests that it will. By avoiding the Kulturkampf, Biden has good advisers on his side, yes, but also age. You can remember when center-left views on economic management implied nothing about one’s cultural instincts. Until it was dissolved in the 1960s, the New Deal coalition of Democrats included some of the most reactionary forces in the country.
Over time, population trends (rising young voters, ethnic minorities) could allow the left to pair liberalism with social democracy without much compromise. But even if demographics were destiny (not all minorities think alike), it won’t take effect for a while. To win in five weeks, Biden has to persuade Midwestern residents who distrust his party’s values that he is better for their tangible livelihoods. He somehow reached that goal on Tuesday.
That America is painfully divided was obvious enough in this heinous debate. The point, for a vote finder, is to pick the right crack. A stab at class politics in a televised debate once helped bring Biden down. The same trick, a generation later, seems more mature for these times. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020
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