Joe Biden may have very well used his post as vice president to bully the Ukrainian government on behalf of his troubled son Hunter. But as the warped rules of 2019 go, the supposed scandal’s return to the news cycle may actually help secure the Democratic presidential primary for the embattled front-runner.
Biden began his third presidential bid by campaigning for the general election, before ever winning a single vote in a primary. Biden took direct shots at President Trump’s fitness for office and billed himself as the nation’s greatest hope at a return to normalcy. Electability was always Biden’s best bet for selling himself in a primary. Strangely enough, a scandal as banal as Biden using his office to assist Hunter, who failed upwards after a dishonorable discharge from the Navy for cocaine use to a lucrative board appointment to the Ukrainian Burisma Holdings, may most effectively continue the electability argument as he creeps closer to the narrowing Iowa caucuses.
The jury is still out on whether Trump actually suggested some quid pro quo arrangement with Ukraine to gain a leg up over Biden for 2020. The president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has made a series of astounding media appearances in the past few days, and the content of Trump’s calls with Ukraine still have yet to come to definitive light. But the narrative has been set to Biden’s favor as the party’s left lane ramps up their attacks on him: Trump is scared of Uncle Joe.
Biden is old. At 78 years old, he’d be older on his Inauguration Day than Ronald Reagan was on his last day in the White House. He’s insufficiently woke in our insufferable era, and the media and the party has seemed to coalesce around Elizabeth Warren as its best intersectional-cum-socialist bet to win the primary.
If you’re the old white guy in a primary that hates old white guys and facing hate for failing to impugn the motivations of all Trump supporters, what better campaign boost could Biden ask for than a story that positions Biden as the victim of Trump’s alleged corruption?
This story benefits Biden because it doesn’t force him to turn on Trump supporters or make a judgment on the laundry list of left-wing policies heralded by Warren and the like. Instead, he can focus on the most unpopular and bipartisan critiques of Trump and thus, the general election.
It remains to be seen until the actual transcript of the Trump call is released, but this story could prove a nothingburger for both Trump and Biden, damage them both by revealing isolated incidents of corruption, or only damage one. But the media’s been forced to run defense for Biden because Drumpf, and I’m willing to bet that he’s seeing the benefit of this story in the long game for 2020.
