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We're officially on Insta! Did I throw on a blazer at 5 am for all you lovely people? You bet I did!
On Thursday, “Former Vice President Joe Biden formally joined the crowded Democratic presidential contest.” RealClearPolitics
The left is divided, with some arguing that Biden is the best chance to beat Trump, and others critical of his messaging strategy.
Biden joins “a cast that includes six senators, five other past or present members of the House and five people who are or have been mayors or governors. Plus two folks who have never been elected to anything and are safe to ignore unless one of them saves a drowning puppy… No wonder Biden is leading in the polls. Potential campaign theme: ‘Vote for Joe — You Can Already Spell His Name.’”
Gail Collins, New York Times
“As Democrats assess the dizzying array of 20 candidates, the first question they should ask is whether a nominee could gain a strong majority in the general election and defeat Trump… [Biden] would be far from an ideal president, let alone a Democratic candidate. Maybe in one of those blessed miracles of American democracy that produced our greatest presidents, someone else will emerge who's younger, smarter, more representative of a diverse electorate. But right now, Biden looks most like the person who could beat Trump. And that’s Job One.”
David Ignatius, Washington Post
“A lot of the attacks on Biden are, from an electoral angle, silly. Going after Biden for his lack of liberal wokeness, for example, seems destined to fail, given that the polling shows that Democrats want the party to move in a more moderate direction. Biden's age is more likely to derail his candidacy… The fact that Biden is called ‘Sleepy Joe’ by Trump and is known to make gaffes may open the age question more than polling indicates right now.”
Harry Enten, CNN
Meanwhile, critics assert that “while most Democrats like Barack Obama personally, the party has lurched left since he left office, and many of its activists now take a dim view of policies that Democrats once deemed mainstream. Thus, if Biden had entered the presidential race with a standard biographical video describing his many accomplishments in public life… he would have immediately prompted a debate about all the positions he once took—on crime, financial deregulation, Anita Hill, and the Iraq War—that Democrats now scorn…
“Biden evades that problem in his announcement video, but at a cost. He bathes the past in a warm glow without defending it substantively. And in so doing, he offers a deeply unconvincing historical narrative in which Trump lands upon the American political scene from outer space.”
Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
“There’s plenty of reasonable debate over whether Democratic candidates should focus on Trump in mounting their arguments, or if they should focus on what they want to do for voters… I suspect this is a bit of a false choice, as what we need is a little bit of both. But if we’re going to talk about Donald Trump, I think we need to acknowledge that he wasn’t created in a vacuum. Our systemic racism and sexism, coupled with our economic insecurities, built a world in which Trump could come to power. Biden’s announcement seems premised on the idea that we need to revert to the world we had before Trump, rather than dramatically rethink the world that produced him.”
Dara Kass, Slate
Minority view: “Biden's presidential announcement video… did something urgently needed in the 2020 race: put President Donald Trump's history of hate front and center. By doing so, Biden acknowledged the pain -- the real pain -- that so many marginalized communities have felt since [2015]… We deeply feel the impact of Trump's attacks. And we want to know that the 2020 Democratic candidates understand that and are willing to respond accordingly.”
Dean Obeidallah, CNN
The right welcomes Biden as a moderate alternative to other Democratic candidates, but wonders if he is progressive enough for primary voters.
The right welcomes Biden as a moderate alternative to other Democratic candidates, but wonders if he is progressive enough for primary voters.
“Former Vice President Joe Biden's entrance into the 2020 presidential election will provide Democrats a choice: Do they want a reset, or do they want a revolution? As Democrats have spent the past several months outlining the sweeping changes they want to make to the United States, more than anything, Biden's candidacy represents a promise to go back to a pre-Trump era in American politics…
“Biden has consistently led in polls. It's of course possible his numbers will collapse as he undergoes more rigorous scrutiny and as his name recognition advantage erodes as voters get to know the other candidates better. Yet it's also possible that a critical mass of the Democratic electorate is more moderate (both ideologically and temperamentally) than it would seem from the online conversation. In that case, Biden has a good chance of taking the nomination.”
Philip Klein, Washington Examiner
“Is the Democratic Party still the party of Barack Obama?... A curious thing happens to Democrats after they leave the presidency. The shine seems to dull from their pennies quite quickly. While Republicans still revere Ronald Reagan decades after his administration, Bill Clinton is viewed by many on the left with scorn. This is not merely a result of his sexual peccadillos, but also a function of how fast the Democratic Party changes…
“By the standards of his time in office, it would be wrong to call Obama a moderate. He did, after all, run to the left of Hillary Clinton in 2008. But by today’s standards, it would be wrong not to call him a moderate… [The question is] does Obama still represent hope and change for the Democratic Party? Or like Bill Clinton, will his moderation be held against him? For Biden, that question will determine the success of his campaign; for the Democratic Party, that question will determine their very identity.”
David Marcus, The Federalist
“Obama was a history-making candidate, allowing voters to be aspirational about their country and themselves by voting for him. And Biden isn’t. Biden is the white guy who got in trouble for calling Obama ‘clean’ and ‘articulate.’... Biden’s candidacy is an attempt by Democrats to bargain with Trump’s America. Other candidates are promising to cleanse America from what Democrats see as the disgrace or even the sacrilege of Trump’s presidency. Democrats don’t want to bargain with the devil, they want an exorcist.”
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review
“There are structural elements facing Biden on the path to the nomination, too, particularly the delegates that can be won in caucuses instead of primaries, where activists have much greater power. It’s those caucuses that Obama used effectively to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2008. Biden will likely perform well in the big states, but he will need an effective caucus organization to have a chance of winning the nomination… With so many credible and not so credible candidates, we may… be headed for a Democratic convention with no winner on the first ballot.”
Mark Penn, Fox News
“It is pretty telling that a seventy-six year old, who’d be 78 if elected, is going to have to swoop in to save the Democrats from themselves and also that he may not be able to do it because he is too moderate for the base. Biden could give Donald Trump a real run for his money. They both understand and connect with blue collar workers who feel left behind. But, Donald Trump can play it right in that these workers fled Obama to Trump. Biden wants them to come back to the folks who left them behind.”
Erick Erickson, The Resurgent
Others posit that “the reason Kim is developing missiles that can strike Seattle or LA is that 28,000 U.S. troops are in South Korea… If we cannot persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons in return for a lifting of sanctions, perhaps we should pull U.S. forces off the peninsula and let China deal with the possible acquisition of their own nuclear weapons by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan…
“After an exhausting two weeks [between North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and others], one is tempted to ask: How many quarrels, clashes and conflicts can even a superpower manage at one time? And is it not the time for the United States, preoccupied with so many crises, to begin asking, ‘Why is this our problem?’”
Pat Buchanan, Townhall
Counterpoint: “after the War of 1812, President Madison… enacted the Tariff of 1816 to price British textiles out of competition, so Americans would build the new factories and capture the booming U.S. market. It worked. Tariffs [also] financed Mr. Lincoln’s War. The Tariff of 1890 bears the name of Ohio Congressman and future President William McKinley, who said that a foreign manufacturer ‘has no right or claim to equality with our own… He pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties’… [A tariff’s] purpose is not just to raise revenue but to make a nation economically independent of others, and to bring its citizens to rely upon each other rather than foreign entities.”
Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Conservative
“The scoop reflects poorly on Trump, who willfully misled the public for a decade in hopes of fraudulently representing himself as a man with a Midas touch. But he could not have succeeded without the assistance of many Americans, some mercenary, others over-credulous, who helped to spread the deceit and deception, generating countless newspaper articles, magazine stories, and TV segments that misinformed the public about the publicity hound’s record in business. New evidence of his staggering losses in that decade therefore provides an apt occasion to reflect on the media’s complicity in Trump’s brazen deceit and deception… Let [this] be a lesson for today’s tabloids, gossip columnists, over-credulous or mercenary journalists, and reality-television producers.”
Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
Police seize 'super obedient' lookout parrot trained by Brazilian drug dealers.
The Guardian
