For months, former Vice President Joe Biden has ran his campaign like a front-runner. It has probably helped preserve his image as an elder statesman and the natural Obama successor who can capably take on President Trump.
But his lackluster and, quite frankly, geriatric debate performance has pummeled his poll numbers, and now he needs to go on the offensive.
Unlike Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Biden isn’t running on a policy message. Although some of his policies (like his climate change policy) are actually rather good, the most salient pitch he must make is the one Democratic voters repeatedly say they prioritize: He can beat Trump.
Yet another post-debate poll has emerged, and yet again, it shows Biden losing ample ground to Sen. Kamala Harris. Biden dipped from 30% in early June to 22% today, and Harris booming from 7% to 20%. But this latest Quinnipiac poll doesn’t just show him ceding overall support to Harris, but specifically among black voters, a cornerstone of his campaign.
Various polls have found Biden dominating anywhere between 40% and 50% of the black vote in recent months, even after Sen. Cory Booker’s attempts to smear Biden on racism charges in South Carolina. Quinnipiac’s post-debate poll finds Biden’s black support at only 31%. Harris has reached 27%.
Biden’s been wise not to get into the gutter with the progressive lane of the party. After all, Sanders and Warren are doing just fine trying to race each other a centimeter and a half to the right of Josef Stalin. But Harris didn’t attack Biden on insufficiently socialist policy. She impugned his character, presented herself as a fighter, and it worked.
So now Biden has to enter the fray. The moment he no longer seems like the candidate best able to beat Trump, his case for his nomination is out the window.
Lucky for Biden, he can join the fight without getting in the gutter. Biden’s pithy “I was a public defender, I didn’t become a prosecutor” didn’t come across strongly enough because he didn’t back it up with the goods. But as it turns out, his case will be very easy to make.
Biden spent half a presidential administration trying to pass the DREAM Act. Kamala supported ICE targeting illegal immigrant students and separating them from their parents.
Biden spearheaded the Violence Against Women Act before it was politically popular to do so. Kamala threatened to lock up the mothers of truant children and put prostitutes at at greater risk as Attorney General of California.
Biden is perhaps more responsible than anyone else alive for the White House endorsing marriage equality. Kamala went out of her way to target transgender prisoners.
Biden led the Obama administration’s charge to tackle campus sexual assault. Kamala refused to prosecute child molesters in the Catholic Church.
Here’s a Twitter thread in case you’re interested in the far-left case for anyone but Harris:
Why You Shouldn’t Support Kamala Harris For The Upcoming 2020 Election: a thread pic.twitter.com/rJVDSfJ5tQ
— Nikola (@niktaylorde) June 30, 2019
So what if these attacks come from the Left? They work, they’d render her unpalatable to both the black and left-wing Democratic bases, leaving Biden to fight the much more vulnerable Sanders and Warren. After all, this polling is rapidly whittling down to a four-way race as Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg continue to lag.
Biden has to be tactful. But all of these arguments provide a substantive contrast to their dueling records. If he remains on the defensive for too long, he’ll seem not just old, but weak, and that will spell the beginning of the end for Biden’s political career.
