Dominic Green Dominic Green

Why Joe Biden won’t beat Donald Trump

Joe Biden possesses the elixir of ordinariness, despite the appearance of having picked his hair and teeth out of a catalog. One of the traits of ordinariness is inconsistency. Another is hypocrisy. These are pardonable flaws among the ordinary, but we expect our leaders to at least remember their lines. Biden’s performance this week shows why he might win the Democratic nomination, but still lose the 2020 election.

On Wednesday, Biden and Cory Booker attended Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, to launch an opportunist attack on Donald Trump for, in Biden’s words, ‘fanning the flames of white supremacy’. On Thursday, after Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke both said that Trump is a ‘white supremacist’, Biden was campaigning in heavily white Iowa at the heavily white Iowa State Fair. Asked if he would describe Trump as a ‘white supremacist’, the heavily white Biden refused, and fell back on his Grandpa Smurf routine.

Biden insisted that he thinks and speaks for himself — ‘I’m Joe Biden,’ he confirmed to himself and his interlocutor — and objected to having words put in his mouth by a journalist. Fair enough; the words that are put into Biden’s mouth are put there by his speech writers. But what does Biden really think?

Does Biden really believe that Trump is a flame-fanning racist who has, as Biden keeps saying, ‘more in common with George Wallace than George Washington’? If he did, it would be grossly hypocritical of him to refuse to confirm this, just because he didn’t want to dent his lead over the other Democratic candidates in heavily white Iowa. In other words, is Biden just mouthing this anti-racist stuff because he hopes it’ll placate the young and woke Democratic left, so he can win the nomination and get on with the business of taking Donald Trump roughly behind the gym?

We can’t know what Biden believes, other than that he deserves the presidency.

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