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Michael Scherer
National political reporter covering campaigns, Congress and the White House
Former vice president, Joe Biden, also wants America to become a big city again – but not like that.
There will be no red cap or clear songs, but the underlying focus on purulent nostalgia for an earlier era was undeniable at the beginning of his presidential campaign.
While President Trump spoke of an idyllic past characterized by greater economic prosperity and less political correctness, the era of Biden Pines predates Trump, when American presidents sought to unify the country and establish institutions. national.
"That's not what we are, the way we treat people," Biden said in his first interview as a candidate on ABC's "The View" on Friday. "There is an American creed. It is a question of decency, honor, including for everyone, leaving no one behind. "
In this way, Biden rejected the ascendancy of conventional wisdom in democratic politics by calling the referendum campaign Trump's character and behavior. Biden and his advisers have bet his candidacy on the idea that a focus on the incumbent president, more than new political ideas, crusades against the establishment or an ideological innovation, will win back the White House for the Democrats.
The decision led to the launch of the campaign with a video on Trump's reaction to the 2017 Charlottesville protests, a situation that the Biden team believed presented a clear contrast between its values.
"The president of the United States has attributed a moral equivalence between those who propagate hatred and those who have the courage to oppose it," Biden said., referring to Trump's comment that "very good people" were white nationalists and neo-Nazis during the violent conflict. "And at that time, I knew that the threat to this nation was different from the one I had ever seen in my life."
People who are familiar with Biden's thinking say that the Charlottesville protests and the president's reaction caused a real change in 2017 in the former vice-president's willingness to run for president. Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the campaign, said Biden had found the events "deeply troubling".
Two weeks later, Biden decided to break the tradition of past Presidents and Vice Presidents by writing an article comparing Trump to "the charlatans, crooks and false prophets who have long marked our history."
"I think Charlottesville made it clear to him what was at stake for the 2020 election," said Ted Kaufman, a longtime friend and advisor, who has worked on Biden's two previous presidential campaigns. "When he's the most energetic, it's in situations where a strong person exerts power over someone else's weaker one."
While re-election efforts are usually referendums on the incumbent, a credo for other Democrats this year has been a top priority given to politics or personality – in both cases theirs, not theirs. Trump. This stems from the successes of the Democratic Congress in the midterm elections, which hammered out issues such as health care and education and prompted the president for further consideration.
Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president, Joe Biden, greets people at Gianni's Pizza in Wilmington, Delaware on Thursday. (Jessica Griffin / AP)
While Biden was planning a campaign launch, he and his assistants decided they did not need to follow the traditional collection of biographical details attached to a list of policy statements, according to people close to the effort. Polls show that, unlike most of his Democratic rivals, he enjoys almost universal name recognition 46 years after coming to power.
The unresolved debate on the ideological orientation of the Democratic Party was not an ideal starting point for a candidate seeking to retain the apparent appearance of an heir, advised his advisers. This is particularly true given that Biden's moderate and incremental instincts do not conflict with the ascending and liberal voices that have dominated the Democratic conversation so far.
The best place to start was the character issue, where they argue that Biden has an advantage over the president in a face-to-face duel.
"Even Mitch McConnell will probably tell you," said one familiar with the talks, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, referring to the long history of the Senate majority leader in reaching agreements with Biden.
Biden's ability to control the plot of his campaign will, however, be put to the test. Prior to his announcement, he had been questioned about his past opposition to public transportation and his friendships with former segregationist lawmakers with whom he had declared he was not in agreement. The announcement of his election campaign was disrupted by the news that Anita Hill, the accuser of sexual harassment of Judge Clarence Thomas, was still not satisfied with Biden's contrition regarding the manner in which he conducted the confirmation hearing that she appeared in 1991.
Biden's rivals also welcomed him with critics. On his first day as a candidate, Biden participated in a fundraiser at the home of a Comcast executive and former lobbyist in Philadelphia, prompting Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) To send an email to supporters to point out that he was not spending his time "Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday in front of an audience in Iowa that during a battle for the reform of bankruptcy more than ten years ago, "Joe Biden was on the side of credit card companies."
Biden's confidants say they have no illusions about the harshness of the campaign. Democratic strategists who are not part of the campaign predict that Biden will have to move away from Trump and focus on political positions that appeal to voters. pass through the primary.
"The main reason for Joe Biden's candidacy is that Trump represents an existential threat to core values and that Biden is the best candidate to defeat Trump," said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who does not work for his campaign. "Mr. Biden will always have to present his progressive agenda for the next four years, probably focused on economics, particularly job creation, job gratification and facilitation for people to enter and stay in the middle class. "
The first signs are that Biden will also tackle this task by referring to the better days. Rather than simply Talk about the middle class, he talked about "The View" about the need to "restore the dignity of work". His speech and rally at a union hall in Pittsburgh on Monday were teased as a discussion about "rebuilding the American middle class." "
This backward focus could exacerbate Biden's age concerns, at age 76, making him the oldest ever to be sworn in. In recent months, he has been one of the only presidential candidates to appear regularly in public with note cards, including a newspaper he brought with him during his Friday morning appearance on ABC.
During this interview, he had initially struggled to answer a question about the differences in his tenure with Barack Obama's administration. He spoke of his close relationship with the former president and his discreet disagreements, without giving details. But then he turned to the upcoming challenge for his campaign.
"On a philosophical basis, it's about moving forward," he said. "It's not about recreating what we did. It's about taking the same decency and the same philosophy that we had and taking them in the future. We can do so many things. My lord."
What it will look like has not been described yet.
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