Former Vice President Joe Biden is plagued by indecision. As he continues to mull whether to enter the 2020 presidential race, Biden also can’t seem to decide whether he wants to run as somebody who can get along with Republicans or whether he wants to be known as a street fighter who is going to beat the hell out of them.
Throughout his career, Biden has vacillated between being a political brawler and somebody who touted his ability to reach across the aisle to cut deals with Republicans. During the previous administration, it was often Biden who played a central role in forging compromises between Barack Obama and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to end impasses over government spending.
As he contemplates a run for the White House, the competing impulses seem to be in conflict.
Speaking Tuesday to the International Association of Fire Fighters, Biden teased a potential run and also riffed on the nastiness of contemporary politics.
“Mean pettiness has overtaken our politics,” Biden lamented. “Sometimes it seems like we can’t govern ourselves, even talk to one another. If you notice, I get criticized for saying anything nice about a Republican. Folks, that’s not who we are.”
Yet just a few weeks ago, Biden apologized for calling Vice President Mike Pence a “decent guy” after activist actress turned liberal politician Cynthia Nixon called him out, citing Pence’s record on LGBT issues.
The apology came after a January appearance in which Biden scoffed at the idea that liking Republicans was a problem.
“I get in trouble,” Biden said at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. “I read in the New York Times today that one of my problems is if I were ever to run for president is I like Republicans. OK, well bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
The wave of stories about how his record of having had nice things to say about Republicans, themselves only came in the wake of many harsh statements fantasizing about physically beating up Trump.
“They asked me would I like to debate this gentleman, and I said no,” he said of Trump last year. “I said, ‘If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.'”
Sometimes, it’s hard to read too much into Biden being Biden, but I do think that these vacillations speak to a central tension of his candidacy.
On the one hand, Biden’s strength is as a more traditional liberal Democrat who hasn’t embraced the resurgent socialist wing of the party and can work with the other side. At the same time, he wants to communicate a willingness to take the fight to Trump, a central demand of the party’s base. So, this seems to be at the root of these conflicting signals.
