“I don’t think Sanders would be able to accomplish his aims as president any more than he has been able to as a senator (he was a primary sponsor of only seven bills that became law, and they are mostly insignificant items, such as naming post offices or designating ‘Vermont Bicentennial Day’). What the Democrats need to stage a revolution, or even a healthy evolution, is to win not only the presidency but also the House and the Senate… Increasingly there’s a sense that in practice the real ‘change candidate’ may be Joe Biden — because he has a better chance of winning the presidency and helping to elect a Democratic Congress — and that’s why he was the big winner on Super Tuesday.”
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

Critics, however, note that “Biden continues to frame his own candidacy as an extension of the Obama administration. It’s unclear what that means. Will it be a continuation of Mr. Obama’s financial policies that benefited the richest Americans, including bank and Wall Street executives who were bailed out in the 2008 financial crisis? Or of his dreadful immigration policies that earned him the label ‘Deporter in Chief’ from immigrant-rights activists? Will it be the same kind of reluctance to take on issues of racial inequality for fear of being pigeonholed as beholden to black interests?…

“Last year, Mr. Obama weighed in on Democratic candidates’ proposals by saying, ‘The average American doesn’t think that we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.’ But aside from his own electoral success, why is he the best judge of the political direction of the party? During his tenure, Democrats lost some 970 seats in state legislatures, 11 governorships, 13 Senate seats and 69 House seats. More Democratic state legislative seats were lost during Mr. Obama’s presidency than under any other president in modern history… [Biden’s] success, in part, reflects the fact that we haven’t fully interrogated Barack Obama’s tenure.”
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, New York Times

Moreover, “The Ukraine situation makes Biden much riskier than many believe… One of Biden’s central rationales for running against Trump is restoring dignity and honor to the White House, an argument that could be undermined in the public’s eye by even the whiff of scandal… A mid-February Politico-Morning Consult poll found that 30 percent of independent voters were ‘less likely’ to support Biden as a result of the [Ukraine] controversy, while only 5 percent were ‘more likely’ (41 percent said it made no difference). Twelve percent of Democrats said that it made them less likely to support the former Vice President as well… If they do settle on Biden, Democrats may well go into the November election much like they did in the 2016 election: with an increasingly unpopular Democratic candidate hobbled by accusations of corruption.”
Zack Beauchamp, Vox

The right is skeptical of Biden’s chances against Trump.“Sanders’s best bet is to make the remainder of the contest about electability. To be sure, Biden would be able to respond with electability arguments of his own, based on Sanders’s self-identification as a socialist and past radical comments that sit uneasily with centrists. But the proper response to that is there is little evidence that voters care about those issues. By contrast, voters very much care about Social Security, about the endless wars in the Middle East, and about the free-trade agreements that ravaged the economy of the Midwest…

“The other key electability argument is about the nature of Sanders’s coalition. Like no other candidate, Sanders attracts voters under 45. This is now the largest cohort of the electorate, but they have a much lower turnout rate than their elders. Sanders could plausibly argue that older partisan Democrats are likely to show up no matter who is on the ballot, as they did in 2016 and the 2018 midterms, because they hate Donald Trump. But younger voters are more marginal: They may or may not show up. So to maximize the Democratic coalition, the party needs to pick someone who excites the young.”
Jeet Heer, The Nation