At his first campaign rally for his third presidential bid, former Vice President Joe Biden proved himself a happy warrior, departing from the stark, prosecutorial, and adversarial tone plaguing most of his 2020 competitors. He smiled as he celebrated not just his union backers but the dignity of work itself, alluding to the eroding social fabric that carried President Trump through the primaries.
Biden managed to square the circle as well as he could have. He didn’t vilify the wealthy (as he’s previously reminded us, “500 billionaires” aren’t “the reason we’re in trouble”) but he did the standard Democratic posturing of slashing tax cuts for the wealthy. Healthcare is a “right,” he says, but one he’d solve by endorsing a Medicare buy-in or public option rather than by abolishing the entire private health insurance market, nationalizing one-fifth of the American economy, and mandating government-funded health insurance.
Libertarians may not love Uncle Joe, but clearly he’s been listening to them. He may have called for a $15 federal minimum wage, but he also called for occupational licensing reform and lambasted noncompete clauses for low-income workers. It’s an easy way to remind the disaffected Right and independents that he’s not following the “Bernie bros” to the crazy train of rampant regulation, and one that serves as evidence that he’s still focusing on a market-oriented view of the economy rather than a centralized one.
The only septuagenarian I can think of as spry and lively as Biden is President Trump himself. It’s not hard to imagine a general election debate between the two proving higher energy than Obama vs. Romney. Most importantly, Biden looks like he’s having fun. He may be a gaffe machine, but his energy and charisma haven’t skipped a beat, and he didn’t back himself into any unsavory corners that he’ll need to walk away from come a general election.
His biggest challenge? Hoping that his bet on Obama-to-Trump voters is enough to build a winning coalition in a fractured field of 20 candidates.
