Joe Biden is one of the front runners for the Democratic nomination for President in 2018.
What the hell?
This is the party that a year and a half ago nominated an emblem of its past who then lost an election to an outfront psychopath with no political experience.
This is the party that supposedly champions the needs of younger voters.
This is the party that supposedly champions the rights of women.
So why would Democrats even consider running a 76-year-old white man in 2018?
Many older Democrats are so nostalgic for the past that they confuse it with their future. These are the folks who were attracted to Hillary Clinton in part because she was a talisman from the Good Old Days Of Bill, who look fondly upon Joe Biden because he was part of the Golden Age of Obama, and who are ready to vault any Congressman named Kennedy right into the White House because they still swoon for the Camelot or yore, when Democrats were suave and sexy. The flip side of this myopic homesickness is that these people overlook the fresh talent in the Party. This childlike sentimentality would be almost charming if it wasn't so deadly dumb politically.
Other Democrats feel good about Biden because he is a true genius at personifying the Regular Guy Union Democrat that used to win elections for the party. This is a real skill that seems genuine and not an act, and it's attractive in an era in which the Democratic Party has lost such voters, but it's also speaks to a yearning for a demographic that has already left the building and for unions that the Party allowed to be crushed.
Another attractive--and absolutely genuine--quality of Biden's that has helped his popularity is his empathy for his fellow human beings. This is also powerfully attractive today, given the heartless bastard who lives in the White House and the sneering viciousness of the Republic Party.
And there are Democrats who like Biden because for the past ten years he has been enjoying the quiet, out-of-the-fray womb of the Vice Presidency, where he has been identified with zero-downside causes like a cure for cancer.
Today NBC is airing an interview with Biden in which the old everyman and Obama sidekick shows why his 2018 Presidential campaign (he's definitely running) will end up as--just like his disastrous runs in 1988 (thirty years ago!) and 2008--in a smoking ruin.
NBC predictably asked Biden about his role in the public lynching of Anita Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991. Those who weren't alive or politically cognizant then would do well to look into that sordid chapter and Biden's behavior at that time. Biden, the chairman of the committee, enabled Hill's testimony and in the end voted against Clarence Thomas, but during the publically televised hearings Biden stood back and let his Republican colleagues viciously slander Hill and destroy her reputation.
So today's interview was a great opportunity for Biden to forthrightly address, here in the very real MeToo era, his role in the character assassination of a victim of sexual assault. He could have shown his human side and admitted the obvious--that in 1991 he was not sufficiently empathetic to either Hill or the issue of sexual harassment, that he didn't do anything to help the search for truth during those hearings, that in the interim he had educated himself and faced up to his shortcomings, that this period of education and self reflection led to his sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act and other efforts, and that he had apologized to Hill.
Instead Biden reverts to the Really Stupid Joe who had to quit his first Presidential campaign because of plagiarism and lying about his law school record and his last because he finished FIFTH in the Iowa caucuses. Biden insists in the interview that he not only relates to the MeToo movement now but that "I think I got it in 1991"--which, if true, would make his actions even more inexcusable. He lamely blames his inability to protect Hill from a public lynching or to allow other, corroborating witnesses to testify, on the rules of the Senate--a truly cringeworthy dodge, even by political standards. And he repeats a comment he made last December--that he owes Anita Hill an apology.
He's never apologized to her. Anita Hill says that whenever her doorbell rings unexpectedly her family jokes that it must be Joe Biden come to apologize.
What the hell?