We Will See Whether Biden is Up to This Challenge Editors’ Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall

We Will See Whether Biden is Up to This Challenge

Editors’ Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall / 2h

I’ve wanted to focus on the substance of President Trump’s extortion scheme with Ukraine. But the attempt inevitably impacts the Democratic primary campaign. There’s a lot of chatter to the effect that President Trump has already succeeded in making the story about Biden and baseless claims of alleged wrongdoing rather than Trump’s criminal behavior. That’s not quite how I see it, though there are many news organizations doing a lot to make that possible. I think you can read the drift of public opinion from the rapid movement of Democratic representatives in the direction of impeachment.

This is more an opportunity for Biden than a challenge. But only if he has the muscle and agility to rise to it.

As we’ve seen over the last week or so, we appear to clearly be in a two person race for the Democratic presidential nomination. And it’s a race where Warren appears to have all the momentum in her favor. Polls have come out in recent days showing her in the lead in Iowa and New Hampshire. Though I haven’t seen a very recent poll there, there’s every reason to believe Biden remains way up in South Carolina. So, with the caveat that much can change over the next few months, this sets up a scenario in which Warren wins Iowa and New Hampshire (where the demographics of the Democratic electorate are favorable for her) and then Biden makes a stand in South Carolina (where they are more favorable to him). Does he stop her in South Carolina or at least get back into the race? Or does the momentum of two rapid fire victories cripple his candidacy and put Warren on the path to the nomination?

President Trump has been caught more or less red-handed in a criminal abuse of power. That will play however it does on Capitol Hill and the electorate nationally. But this also gives Biden an opportunity to elevate himself into a one on one fight with Trump. Trump’s wrongdoing is directly aimed at the threat of Biden’s candidacy. That is a demonstrable measure of how Trump fears Biden. Biden can obviously play that in his favor. Biden can also shape that around his experience in foreign policy, which has always been his comfort zone more than domestic policy.

My point is that the whole scandal provides Biden with an excellent opportunity to grab hold of the campaign narrative, portray it as a fight between him and Trump and even stitch it together with the events of the Obama administration. The question in my mind is whether he has it in him to do that. His first comments last week were defensive and feeble. Pretty quickly he went on the offensive and made efforts at the kind of response I sketch out above.

Elizabeth Warren is running a very different kind of campaign. It is heavily policy-based, clearly reformist and focused on fundamental socio-economic change. Biden can’t, doesn’t want to and never will run that kind of campaign. But Trump’s crimes (directed at him and focused on Trump’s fear of Biden) gives him a clear opening (at a moment when he could really use an opening) to run the kind of campaign that works for him.

This is why I’ve never been terribly worried about whether Biden is up to the rigors of a presidential campaign, either because he’s never really been in a competitive election since the 1970s or because of his age. The primary campaign itself and how voters react to it will answer that question and there’s plenty of time to do so. This fast forwards that challenge. This story is both a threat and an opportunity. We will see pretty soon how and whether he rises to that challenge.

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