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.