With a night to reflect on Joe Biden’s lengthy Sept. 3 appearance in Kenosha, Wisconsin, please allow a few general impressions leading to the conclusion that it was a good outing for the Democratic nominee.
It was a good outing for two major reasons. First, Biden exceeded the low expectations for him that the Trump campaign stupidly had set. Second, on a personal level, the decency and genuinely empathetic nature of what I have described as the “good Biden” was on full display. There’s definitely a “bad Biden,” too, sometimes very bad, but he was not on display in Kenosha.
By the telling of the Trumpsters and their media enablers, Biden is flat-out “senile.” This is nonsense. Nobody with senility could hold forth for more than an hour, without a teleprompter, very much on point throughout, as Biden did yesterday. Some of what he said was highly debatable, and a few boasts were Bidenite exaggerations, but that’s a different thing from someone without control of his faculties.
Watch for yourself here. Biden seemed weary, his breathing was labored, and his voice’s volume was low. But his thoughts logically flowed from one another, his statistics (whether 100% accurate or not) came from memory and were applied both logically and coherently to his points, and he showed excellent recall for people and places both short- and long-term, including names of and things said by people he just met that day.
Senile people can’t do that. Yes, there have been plenty of recent occasions in which Biden seems to have lost his train of thought, gotten flustered, or rambled a bit incoherently. Those things happen more frequently to some people as they age: If they tire, they get mentally foggy, and it is reasonable to question their physical or mental fortitude. But that doesn’t mean they are senile.
Yesterday, Biden showed someone not just in full possession of his faculties but able to “connect” with his audience both in person and on video. One can see it on the faces of those in the Kenosha church, hear it in their voices: Even as weary as he seemed, they clearly felt his empathy and were convinced of his sincerity. Watching the video, I felt the same.
Set aside philosophical differences with Biden about to what degree racism is “institutionalized” or what policies will ameliorate poverty. There can be no doubt that the Biden we saw in Kenosha — the good Biden, the reflective rather than bombastic Biden — fully believed the narrative he spun and the analyses he gave. Biden’s record does show a consistent patriotism, even if wrongly applied, and a consistent enthusiasm for trying to seek deals across the political aisle. Also sincere and welcome was his insistence that the way to enact change is through the system, specifically by voting rather than by burning the system down.
This was the Biden who is an old-style liberal somewhat, but not radically left of the late liberal Hubert Humphrey and whose temperament is more moderate than his policies. It’s the Biden who can reassure suburban soccer moms and blue-collar families that he can restore “normalcy” while caring about people like them and broadly sharing their “values.”
Biden’s record shows his policy instincts are not centrist but very liberal, and I think his age and seeming lack of stamina make him even more likely to be dominated by the hard-left wing represented by his running mate, Kamala Harris. Still, if Biden’s whole campaign will feature forums like the one in Kenosha, without tough, give-and-take from an honestly skeptical media, he will continue to have a decent chance at victory.
