A new post-debate poll by CNN confirms what many predicted: Joe Biden’s lead was bound to give sooner rather than later.
Biden’s poor performance in last week’s Democratic primary debate left him open to attacks from members of his own party. The result was a significant drop in numbers: Biden fell from 32% to 22% in less than a week. And Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., jumped from 8% to 17% after confronting Biden about his opposition to school busing in the context of racial school integration.
Until today, the former vice president has been the obvious front-runner. But his appeal is rooted in familiarity, not policy. He’s a remnant of the Obama era and a party that valued leniency, a recognizable face that reminds voters of the days when Democrats were in charge.
But the 2020 election is not an exercise in nostalgia, it’s about who can put the Democrats back in charge, and the measures the chosen candidate will be willing to take to make that happen. Thanks to the Democratic Party’s lurch to the Left, those measures are becoming more and more extreme, leaving little room for Biden and his moderate platform.
If the Democratic Party is to continue its liberal march to the left, Biden must go. And so, his Democratic opponents have weaponized his past policies and choices against him, attempting to defame his character to rid it of its familiar appeal.
Peggy Noonan warned this would happen: In April, before Biden launched his campaign, she wrote that Biden would receive “none of the old respect.”
“You will be judged to be old-school, and insufficiently doctrinaire,” she wrote. “Today’s rising young Democrats see no honor in accommodation, little virtue in collegiality … Your very strength — that you enjoy talking to both sides, that deep in your heart you see no one as deplorable — will be your weakness.”
Noonan’s words have waxed prophetic. The Democratic Party is a much different thing today than it was when Biden was at his prime. Perhaps by running for the Oval Office he thought he could restore it to some of its former glory and win back the moderates who turned to Trump in 2016. But the truth is that the Democratic Party and the candidates who now represent it don’t want to win back those voters. Rhetorically, they claim to care about the middle class, discontent voters who put Trump in the White House, but their policies tell a much different story. When more than 70% of Americans with private insurance say they’re satisfied with their plans and all but five or six Democratic candidates support “Medicare for all,” which abolishes private insurance, it’s obvious that there’s a serious disconnect between the party and the electorate. But the Democrats don’t care.
I wrote earlier that to keep his lead, Biden needed to offer serious, coherent policies that voters could rally behind. But I now suspect that not even that would be enough. No amount of reasonable solutions will win him the nomination if they’re not the solutions the Democratic Party wants.
Biden’s numbers will continue to drop in the polls as younger, more energetic candidates continue to target him and tout radical, liberal ideas. He’s out of touch — not with the electorate, but with his own party. It’s a shame: Biden’s candidacy is exactly what the Democratic Party needs. If only they were wise enough to embrace it.
