Joe Biden Presses the Flesh

If you've been paying attention to the 2020 Democratic Presidential race at all so far, it can't have escaped your notice that something is not right with Joe Biden.  He was already bad but in the years since he has left the White House (going by history and not by Biden's delusional accounting) he has apparently declined from mere conventional terribleness to abject Hall of Horrors wretchedness as a candidate.  Already this season-- above and beyond betraying in his off-the-cuff remarks a loose idea of where he is at any given moment in the space-time continuum and a tenuous grasp on logic let alone the English language-- he has invited public reflection on his very troubling record with regard to race by reminiscing fondly about cooperating on legislation with segregationists (after opening his campaign with a message condemning Donald Trump's softness on racists); he's expressed a (no joke!) lack of empathy for millenials with regard to the way the outrageous cost of their educations have put them deeply and possibly permanently in debt at the start of their working lives; he has broken a pledge to take no money from fossil fuel executives at least twice; he has had to promise to "do better" in the area of unwelcome touching (while openly mocking the need to).  When his mouth opens you'd better believe his handlers tremble in fear of what could come out.  In this way he bears a strong resemblance to what he and a large contingent in the media presume will be his foe in the general election, and this could well be what inspires his backers most.

The loose cannon excitement of Donald Trump but filtered through the sensibility of an eager-to-compromise Centrist Neo-liberal democrat? How could he lose?  I'll tell you how: because if you like Donald Trump, the weak tea Democratic knockoff is not going to appeal to you in the least, and you can be sure the ones whose abstention from voting for centrist Hillary Clinton in 2016 enabled Trump's electoral victory will find better things to do on election day than vote for Joe Biden.

This invites the pondering of 2 mysteries.  First, given his propensity for extreme incoherence on every position of importance and the folksy logorrheic chaos that spews from his loose-dentured maw, why does he continue to remain at the top of the polls?  Even given the kid glove treatment that Biden, who is as solid a member of the establishment as there is, gets from the mainstream media, it would take pathological cluelessness to miss that the wires are coming loose.   My theory is that if Joe Biden is your candidate, you are not paying attention to the 2020 Democratic Presidential race.  The very act of preferring Joe Biden is an advertisement that you do not pay attention.   If you can't be moved from the hope that Biden must defeat Trump, taking the ostrich approach to how things are going with your candidate might be the only way for the hope to survive.  But will his supporters wake up in time to keep from making a monumental blunder come primary season?

Second, why is Trump's team apparently actively working on sabotaging Biden before the first primary vote has been cast?  You would be forgiven for thinking it's because they do not want Biden to be Trump's opponent.  But this makes no sense.  On the playing field in which Joe Biden and Donald Trump play, Trump is the hands down winner. Trump will chew Sloppy Joe up and spit him out within seconds of facing off against him in a debate.   The negative ads write themselves. Defending him against the attacks his behavior will invite will be a chore few will be eager to rise to. No, I don't think they want to prevent Biden from winning the nomination.  I think they are convinced Biden will be the nominee and, starting as they are from a very well deserved gigantic deficit in voter support themselves,  they aim to start chipping away now at the will to elect he who they assume, right or wrong, will be their opponent in the general election (provided their efforts aren't their own undoing).  In this fashion they expect to repeat the successful strategy that they employed and took advantage of against Hillary Clinton 4 years earlier.

It's not too late to thwart them from making 2020 a rerun of 2016, but it's going to call for the paying of attention beforehand.  As an appetizer, here, from Twitter, is a little slice of life on the Biden 30330 campaign trail that illustrates so much of why Joe Biden is so wrong for the job. 

🏭 @JoeBiden's climate plan doesn't call for a ban on fracking natural gas

🏭🏭 Andrew Goldman, who recently hosted a fundraiser for Biden, co-founded a natural gas company

🏭🏭🏭 Heather Zichal (Biden's climate adviser) has made a million dollars off of natural gas

🤔🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/dbDQZIuRC5

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) September 23, 2019