Biden reverses assumptions about Democrats

CRÊME PHILADELPHIA – Former Vice President Joe Biden defends his support for the 1994 crime bill, which many blame for the massive incarceration of blacks. He states that most Americans are "satisfied" with a private insurance system criticized by the left. He justifies the North American Free Trade Agreement as a pact that "made sense for the moment".

And much to the dismay of many liberals, he will not ask for a study of reparations for slavery, saying the nation has other ways to fight racism.

During his first few weeks in the presidency, Biden rejected much of the conventional wisdom that led to the first stretch of the Democratic nomination struggle, refusing to play against the party's liberal wing, to focus on the wrongs of the past or to call for a revolutionary transformation.

To the surprise of many, he has been rewarded with a lead in polls that, until now at least, has proven to be sustainable and stable. As a result, his candidacy challenges assumptions about what Democratic voters want in the era of President Trump.

Biden's campaign is at the heart of Biden's campaign: his rivals are wrong to regard the current Democratic party as liberal, angry and ready for revolution – a case he presented in an unusual way during a demonstration in Biden. Philadelphia Saturday.

"I know some of the smartest say that Democrats do not want to hear about unity," he said. "They say the Democrats are so angry that the more an angry candidate, the more likely he is to win the Democratic nomination.

"Well, I do not think so."

For Biden's team, Democrats looking for ever more dramatic solutions to the nation's problems miss the point. They think that the Democratic Party is already fundamentally different from the GOP, which has quickly swung right over many issues in recent years, and feel that it's not necessary to respond to this with a move towards the left.

A poll in January by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of Republicans wanted their party to be more conservative. By contrast, 53% of Democrats wanted their party to become more moderate.

This raises the question of whether the party's center of gravity relies less on vocal activists than on a quieter group of voters who are less likely to join Twitter or run for campaign events. "His candidacy may be different," said John Anzalone, Biden's election campaign investigator. "But it's the one that works."

Biden makes an appearance at Community Oven in Hampton, N.H., on May 13th. (Melina Mara / The Washington Post)

Many of Biden's rivals have a very different message. Candidates like Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Feel that the rise of Trump is not an aberration, but the culmination of a deeper decay of the American political system that requires major surgery.

"The man at the White House is not the cause of what is broken," Warren said in his campaign statement. "It's only the latest and most extreme symptom of what went wrong in America – a product derived from a rigged system that supports the rich and powerful and throws dirt on all other."

Others have proposed similar diagnoses. "You do not even get a chair like this, unless something goes wrong," said Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, Ind. During a recent election campaign. "The promise to return to normal ignores that it has not worked for many people."

For Biden, however, the problem is largely Trump himself. The country just needs to get back to the basics, he says – probably a no-nonsense view for a man who was at the center of power before Trump's election.

"Four years of this presidency will go down in history as an aberration," Biden said during multiple fundraisers across the country.

Biden's more liberal critics believe that his lead in the polls is temporary and does not reflect his approach, but only the recognition of his name and association with his former boss.

"What he's showing is that Barack Obama is popular among primary voters," said Waleed Shahid, spokesman for Justice Democrats, a group that helped elect representative Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (DN.Y.), one of the party leaders. the liberal wing of the party.

Shahid pointed to polls suggesting that Democrats support policies such as Medicare-for-all, a health policy that Biden does not support, as well as the Green New Deal, an ambitious climate program. Nearly 70 percent of Democrats and independents said they want a candidate who would support Medicare-for-all, according to a recent Suffolk-USA Today poll.

"Many voters support these policies and support Joe Biden because they do not know where Joe Biden follows these policies," said Shahid, predicting that when voters learn more about his locker, they will move away from him. . .

According to his critics, Biden's record includes positions that have hindered Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy in 2008 and 2016, including his support for the war in Iraq, his perceived intimacy with Wall Street and his support for the NAFTA and other multilateral free trade agreements.

However, another explanation could explain the beginning of the Biden elections in Iowa, New Hampshire and across the country: primary voters are not as focused on the litmus tests as the activists. Instead, they are looking for a more centrist candidate who could attract independent and Republican voters and beat Donald Trump. In the Suffolk-USA Today poll, 48% of Democrats and independents said they want a winning candidate, 10 points higher than those who prefer a candidate that fits their priorities.

"The left makes a lot of noise. They receive a lot of press, "said Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic National Committee and neutral in the race for Democrats. "When people vote in the primaries and they know that the general election is competitive, there is plenty of evidence to show that they make sophisticated judgments about who can win."

Biden meets voters at the Big Grove brewery in Iowa City in May. (Melina Mara / The Washington Post)

Others argue that the Democrats want a return to the country they first knew before being corrupted, in their view, by the Trump Presidency – and Biden represents it.

"Joe Biden is not a risky choice," said Patti Solis Doyle, Democratic strategist who led the Clinton campaign in 2008. "Democrats are not willing to take a risk this time."

Biden's critics say the former vice president is the biggest risk to the party. His other potential weaknesses have not yet been widely debated by other candidates, although many of them have swept Biden in recent days, suggesting a bigger fight.

When he had to respond to critics, he sometimes seemed to ignore the concerns of the left.

Senator Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), Interviewed by New Hampshire reporters about Biden's remark, said, "I do not agree with that."

And although Biden did not unveil his climate change proposal, he went to the left after a councilor told Reuters his plan was the one that would take the "right balance". Sanders responded on Twitter: "There is no" happy medium ". in the field of climate policy.

At his rally on Saturday, Biden said the "first and most important element of his climate policy" is to defeat Trump.

Biden got early support from the unions in the form of an approval from the International Association of Fire Fighters. But other union leaders are uncomfortable with his recent comment that NAFTA, which they deem to be detrimental to American workers, "makes sense right now."

Sara Nelson, president of the Flight Attendant Association, who has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate, predicted that more attention would be given to NAFTA in the next weeks.

"Once we have a real debate among the Democratic candidates and you start talking about things that interest people, I think it will be harder for them to defend themselves where they are on this issue," he said. Nelson about Biden.

The former vice president has adopted more liberal positions on some issues. He favors a minimum wage of $ 15, like most other Democratic candidates, and wants to amend the Affordable Care Act to include a public option. He said he wants to decriminalize marijuana.

And he vocally embraced many economically populist themes. He routinely opposes the greed of corporate executives, claiming that they punish workers in difficult times but reward Wall Street in times of plenty.

This sentiment reflects his longstanding political identity as the champion of ordinary workers who were his neighbors in Scranton, Pennsylvania. "They prevent the lives of workers," he said during a speech in Pittsburgh.

The Biden campaign has many other liberal causes, which can electrify left-wing social media flows but are less important to most Americans.

When a recent article highlighted the mismatch between the political views of those who tweeted and those who voted, Kate Bedingfield, Biden's assistant campaign manager, shared a link on Twitter.

"It's so important for Dems to remember," she wrote.

Chelsea Janes and David Weigel contributed to this report.