Memo to Joe ...
Hey, things are going great. Take it easy.
Our former vice president is on a roll. A man who’d never won a primary before in three presidential campaigns pretty much swept the board on Super Tuesdays I & II. This was probably the best week of his entire political career.
Except maybe for the visit to an automobile plant in Detroit, where Biden called a union worker “full of s---” while shushing an aide who tried to get him to calm down.
It was during an argument over gun control. When his adversary said, “You’re working for me, man,” Biden swiftly retorted, “Don’t be such a horse’s ass.”
Several problems here, including the fact that when an, um, voter says, “You’re working for me,” the preferable response is: “Well, I certainly hope to be soon. You know, in the White House.”
Biden’s supporters are quick to note that said union member popped up on Fox News the next day, claiming the former vice president had gone after him for supporting the right to bear arms. Or actually, the right to bear semi-automatic weapons.
One way or another, it was a bad moment. But hey, Biden is 77 and he’s been schlepping all over the country, giving speeches, eating bad food, shaking hands. (Don’t shake hands!) During his big, celebratory appearance after the primaries last week, his wife had to fight off a sign-wielding vegan who stormed the victory podium.
So the Detroit incident is hardly a moment that’s going to live on in history. We could forget about it instantly were it not a reminder that Biden is not great at spontaneous back-and-forth, like you get in ... a debate. One of which is scheduled for Sunday, when he meets Bernie Sanders one-on-one.
Even Sanders seems to hope his opponent doesn’t screw this one up. Bernie’s I’m-still-in-it announcement Wednesday did not contain a single negative word about Biden. (On the other hand, within the first 50 seconds, he managed to call Donald Trump a “pathological liar” as well as “racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot.” Kudos.)
Sanders began by acknowledging he’d had a bad night Tuesday, vote-wise. Indeed, any address in which a candidate’s most positive remark is “on the other hand, we won in North Dakota” could probably be described as bleak. Particularly when combined with an acknowledgment that tons of his admirers are saying that they’re going to vote for Biden because they think “Joe is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”
Which is kinda the whole point. Truly, if it was a choice between nominating the reincarnation of George Washington or the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump, Democrats would know which way to go.
All Sanders wants now is for Biden to adopt more of his political positions. And for the most part, the two men are on the same wavelength. It’s just that Sanders’ wavelength is more ... intense. For instance, he said he’s planning to ask Biden: “Are you really going to veto a Medicare-for-All bill if it is passed in Congress?” A perfectly fair answer would be to say: “Bernie, if I win, the chances that Congress is going to send me a Medicare-for-All bill when I want something less sweeping are approximately the size of an anthill. An anthill constructed for an ant-chihuahua. Don’t be a dope.”
Forget the part about not being a dope! Exactly where we are trying not to go.
The Biden camp thinks voters have no problem with his tendency to retort creatively. (Like the time a student asked about caucuses, and he wound up calling her “a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” Which was a joke. Seriously.)
Sure, it’s unlikely that debate teams of the future are going to be studying his rhetoric. Remember the time an 83-year-old Iowan claimed Biden was “too old” to be president and Biden challenged him to a pushup competition? But we’re talking choices here. Who wouldn’t rather have a president with a habit of babbling than one who’d move into the Oval Office and start deconstructing the government’s pandemic control team?
Perhaps you remember a speech to college students Biden gave a couple of years back, in which he semi-ranted about Trump’s record on manhandling women — always a perfectly reasonable target. But he then devolved into his dream of going back to high school to “beat the hell out” of the “guy who ended up becoming our national leader.” It sorta went downhill from there, with Biden saying that his experience in locker rooms told him that a man who talked like Trump “was usually the fattest, ugliest SOB in the room.”
He seemed to be getting carried away. Although of course we’ve been through a lot since then. If he was giving the speech now, Biden could say the guy in the locker room “was usually the one who’d claim he knew all about medical science because one of his relatives taught at MIT.”
I’m only recalling this since it gives me a chance to point out that after I wrote, rather disapprovingly, about that particular address, Biden called to thank me “for showing me what a jerk I was.”
Try to imagine Donald Trump doing something like that.
Gail Collins
Gail Collins is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.
