Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the funeral of John McCain, remembering the late Arizona senator and simultaneously offering a new political gospel to Democrats desperate for salvation from the current bitterness and ingratitude plaguing their party. It was a battle plan disguised as a eulogy, and it was beautiful.
Biden spoke for 30 minutes, offering up what one Republican would aptly describe afterward as a “hymn to America.” Tears fell when he talked about McCain “as a brother.” A smile flashed when he added that the two senators “had a hell of a lot of family fights.” His voice cracked when he cursed the cancer that ended McCain, the same disease that “took my beautiful son Beau’s life.”
And not once did Biden lose the audience because, as revivalist, Biden told that congregation that McCain believed in the soul of America.
“John’s story is the American story, that’s not hyperbole. It’s the American story. Grounded in respect and decency, basic fairness. The intolerance for the abuse of power,” preached Biden.
“He made average Americans proud,” ministered Biden.
“Even though John is not with us, he left us pretty clear instructions: ‘Believe always in the promise and greatness in America because nothing is inevitable here,” exhorted Biden.
The eulogy belongs alongside the best sermons of civil religion, in part because of the path to redemption it offers Democrats. Be decent therefore, Biden seemed to be saying, as the late senator was decent. It’s the way back to a better polity and it’s the way back to majorities. Maybe even to the White House.
Only the coldest hearts could walk away from Biden’s speech rolling their eyes. Even evangelicals, who hate Biden’s principles, had to have been endeared to Biden’s personality. And this is the power of the eulogy, because it is the inverse of the current president. Voters with Midwestern sensibilities hate Trump’s personality, but most of them love his policies. They have learned to be transactional and politically thrifty after electing on certain conditions a thrice divorced philanderer from New York City.
But those voters aren’t going to make a deal with some self-righteous senator from Massachusetts. They aren’t going to take kindly to a progressive firebrand from Brooklyn who tells them that they are backward and bad. If Democrats want any chance, they have to recognize why Hillary Clinton could never win Wisconsin, and they have to realize why shrill socialist ideologues still can’t win in Kansas.
Biden understands this, and Biden has to be kicking himself daily for not running for president when he had the chance. There is still something to be said for the decency he displayed. There is still something to be said for the principles he espoused — and at one point in a speech noticeably absent of politics, Biden straight up quoted the Declaration of Independence. For 30 minutes, he sounded more presidential than Trump and a helluva lot more conservative than, say, Steve Bannon. Behind the pulpit, Biden was Uncle Joe again.
If Democrats want to win in 2020, they will take Biden’s comments to heart.
