The genius of Barack Obama lay in the fact that Americans looked at him and could believe in almost anything. The left of the Democratic Party saw the revolutionary incarnation of hope, the promise of sweeping social change, and, in a black president, the overturning of America’s original sin. The center saw a measured product of Harvard Law School, a prudent reformer, a man of mixed identity and the middle ground.
Moderates were closer to the mark. Obama, a cool man, proved cautious to a fault. Still, the way he cloaked his coolness and masked his aloofness in the language of the heart was brilliant. This time around, there is no such political genius out there among the Democratic contenders.
The field appears to have narrowed to the occasionally befuddled and befuddling Joe Biden as the standard-bearer of moderation, and the nimble, plan-a-minute star of the campaign to date, Elizabeth Warren, with her progressive program of social and fiscal reform.
Snapping at their heels, from a growing distance, is Bernie Sanders, with voice raised. His habitual dyspepsia has been sharpened by the way Warren steals his revolutionary thunder. No socialist, she; on the contrary, Warren calls herself a “capitalist to my bones,” but ready, unlike Biden, to tax the superrich who have skewed America’s promise. That’s her economic patriotism — a smart way to fight Donald Trump’s economic nationalism.
Some game-changer may yet come along. Biden could blow himself up with a shocking moment of incoherence or insult that goes beyond his known liabilities. He has already come close to that. He will be more exposed in the months ahead than he was as vice president at the no-drama White House.
If the moderate Democratic ground opens up, the temptation for Michael Bloomberg to fill it may prove overwhelming, or, just possibly, another candidate — Kamala Harris, Cory Booker — will gain that elusive traction.
If Warren widens her lead over Sanders, will he withdraw in a way that might wrap it up for her? Railroaded out in 2016, when the Bernie-buzz was fresh, he will not, I suspect, be inclined to favors. Mr. Magnanimous he is not. Warren will have to fight it out. On the evidence, that will galvanize her.
Biden is trying to bridge reassurance to the wealthy with outreach to energized progressives. That balancing act has maintained his lead in polls. If two Obama terms were not enough for you, he’s offering something resembling a third — Obamacare Plus; a possible increase in capital-gains tax to address inequality.
Will this fine-tuning be enough in an agitated America, whiplashed by President Donald Trump? I doubt it. The under-30s, maybe under-40s, are underwhelmed by Biden, even angry that this honorable man has not chosen dignified retirement. He’s the emblem of the permanent political class, the one that created the conditions for Trump, in an era that Trump’s wild policy lurches and heresies and, yes, lies have now transformed.
America’s restoration, after this trauma, will not be achieved by going back. What created Trump cannot oust Trump. It will demand a new politics, and a new integrity, such as the one Warren has set out and embodied with greater vigor, persuasiveness and coherence than anyone else. Biden, on whom Trump may have been seeking dirt in a July phone call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine, can put an end to the president’s sullying of the Oval Office. He can’t, however, embody renewal.
Is Warren too far left to win? Maybe. Does she worry some purple-district Democrats who did well in 2018? Yes. But she can adjust. As for “electability,” an overused word, well, Trump won, and may again, so all bets are off.
I said Biden has come close to a blowup moment. The campaign is grueling. You don’t have to be almost 77 to slip up. But he has demonstrated tone-deafness on race in a way that is disturbing.
His reference to a “record player” in the last Democratic debate in the context of a question about reparations for slavery tied Biden to a bygone era, but that was far from the worst of it. Talking about black families — that is what the question was about — he actually said: “We bring social workers into homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help. They don’t, they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the, the — make sure the kids hear words.”
They don’t know what to do! Make sure the kids hear words! This is insulting toward African Americans. It’s of a piece with Biden’s comment (quickly adjusted) in August that “we have this notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids.”
There’s a way, and a need, to talk about fundamental systemic racial injustice, but this is emphatically not it. Black does not equal poor and inept. The genius has left a void. Right now it’s not his vice president who may just fill it enough, but Warren.
