Joe Biden did very well last night in his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination and wrapping up the convention.
I’ll make no big claims about how much he helped his chances of winning in November. More below about that.
But just as a guy who sat through not only the long Biden speech-to-an-empty-room but the hours of regular-folks stuff that preceded it (adorably moderated by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), I’ll say that Biden did very well, and I predict he’ll get a bounce, and I have no idea how big of a bounce or what happens afterwards.
First a couple of silly but obvious points. It was a long speech and Biden is not a young man, and he delivered it almost flawlessly, with good energy and fluency and conviction.
Biden offered two lists of considerations voters should take into account in deciding between himself and Donald Trump. Both lists were very helpful, not only in framing the speech, but in assuring that he would be a vastly preferable president for the next four years than you-know-who.
The first list was the “four crises” that he said the nation faces heading into the next presidential term: the pandemic; the economic crisis; racial justice, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing and the ensuing riots; and climate change.
If you agree (and I do) that this was a pretty good list of giant issues to be faced either by Biden or Trump over the next four years, it’s also a terrible, terrible list for Trump and therefore an excellent argument for trading him in on a new leader.
Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic is beyond dispute among the reality-based community. Trump will continue to mismanage it. One of the snarky but brilliant bumper stickers available says “Any Competent Adult 2020.” Biden might be great, or not, in helping us turn the corner, but he will be better than Trump.
The terrible economy of the moment is largely an adjunct to the health crisis. Trump will claim that he had the economy humming before COVID (or, as he prefers to call it, “the China virus”). But, as they say, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. I also think this claim of a strong economy is more true for Trump, the investor class and other very rich Americans than for the struggling middle and working classes, and that it was largely produced by irresponsible fiscal policies for which future generations will be paying.
“Racial justice” is a perpetual issue in America, but the killing of George Floyd and its aftermath has elevated it to the consensus list of current crises. It’s another crisis that’s really bad for Trump, and much better for Biden and for Democrats in general, except among racists. Trump has a lock on the racist vote. (I can’t quite figure out how much that explains his perpetual 40 percent approval rating, but it’s definitely in there.) Biden has a black running mate, overwhelming support of nonwhite Americans other than Kanye West (who is trying to help Trump by running his own utterly hopeless independent campaign for president in hopes of siphoning some black votes from Biden).
The fourth item on Biden’s four-crisis list was climate change, a truly life-on-earth-threatening issue on which Trump has done everything imaginable to make it worse. (I seem to remember him pulling out of the only promising global effort on that global problem, called the Paris Agreement. Any functioning adult who can replace Trump in the White House in 2021 will certainly rejoin that accord. I’m sure Biden, who had a role in the Obama-Biden leadership that helped create the agreement, will do so.)
So, if you accept Biden’s list of the four crises that need to be faced, and if you are not a racist, a climate-change denier nor someone who has benefited from the COVID economy, you will find Biden’s first list a pretty good argument for anybody-but-Trump and specifically for Biden to take over.
Biden also offered a list of six let’s say human qualities that he said were “on the ballot” in November, meaning you should be inclined to support whichever of the candidates possessed these qualities more than the other. Again, it’s a reasonable list of abstractions for choosing a president, maybe a great list, and, again, it’s a very good list for Biden or for anyone who might be running against Donald Trump.
The five things that Biden said were “on the ballot” were contained in one paragraph (and you’ll note, after the list of five, Biden added three more huge abstractions, that he implied were also “on the ballot.” Here’s the paragraph:
This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time. Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot.
You can have your own views about what presidential qualities are “on ballot” in a choice between Trump and Biden. But his on-the-ballot list is pretty defensible, and very, very bad for Donald John Trump in a comparison with Joe Biden among voters who care about such old-fashioned qualities as character, compassion, decency, etc.
I meant to keep this short, but the speech was not short (and it was preceded by a long celebrity-studded pre-show (Julia Louis-Dreyfus was especially funny and snarky).
So I’ll wrap this up, invite your comments below, and just mention that in Fox News’ after-speech coverage, Chris Wallace, Fox’s most honest on-air personality, said that the combination of the speech itself, and Biden’s unwavering fluent delivery, “blew a hole, a big hole,” in Trump’s effort to portray Biden as too old, feeble, confused to be president. “It seems to me that after tonight, Donald Trump will have to run against a candidate, not a caricature,” Wallace said.
Sure, Wallace acknowledged, Biden was reading from a teleprompter. (I would note that Trump is much worse at reading from a teleprompter. And when he ad libs, he is more genuine, and maybe more fluent, but shows the darkness of his soul.)
This CNBC link will get you both a full transcript and a full video of Biden’s speech.
The other thing that I feel makes a massively strong juxtaposition to the Trumps is the amazing and enviable love and solidarity among the large Biden clan. They love and laugh and share phone calls, meals, and gatherings regularly. They celebrate life hugely. They support each other openly. And despite multiple gut-wrenching losses–that they got thru together–they show gratitude ongoing. And they have, and continue to, contribute to our country in a myriad of positive ways. People who unabashedly care, who empathize with and for others, and who give without any thought to ‘what’s in it for them’ are in a class all by themselves. And we need far more of them. They are positive examples and true gifts.
“One of the snarky but brilliant bumper stickers available says “Any Competent Adult 2020.” ”
As Wallace points out, the Trump campaign’s efforts to denigrate Biden as feeble & senile are aimed precisely at this line of thinking. It seems to me that tactic will flame out as well.
I’m very curious to see how the GOP convention compares to the DNC’s. Given Trump’s ego & alleged plan to participate daily, I expect it to be a dramatic contrast to what went on this week. Have they pivoted significantly & developed a format that translates to a virtual convention? It will certainly be interesting, I’m sure.
The primary musical entertainment will be Lindsey Graham signing and playing the guitar as all professional performers want to be associated with Trump to the same extent they want to catch COVID19.
And as long as we are on Lindsey, I was really hoping to see his tear filled endorsement of his old friend Joe in one of the DNC video tributes.
Thanks Mr. Black. I appreciate the post game report more than watching the speeches. Highlights are enough for me.
For me, the best part of yesterday was the special ops visit that morning to the 150 foot renegade Chinese billionaire yacht off Connecticut.
Steve Bannon is added to the list of in-trouble Trump campaign thugs.
Now I look forward to hearing more about those other Donnie Jr. and Jared Kushner criminal referrals.
Perhaps Barr has mislaid them.
I watched on CNN and their post speech panel included Scott Jennings as the token Republican. He needed to find some fault and pointed to his belief that Biden avoided any solutions for recent unrest/protests.
Which is more illustrative of his thinking than Biden’s words. If Biden would of said how many butts he would kick and folks he would arrest, Jennings would have been able to understand that as a response. Instead Biden speaks of racial justice and changes along those lines and Jennings, and Trumpian Rs, can’t even comprehend that as a solution.
Why address the root cause when you can just crack a few heads and beat them back to the old days?
Yeah, that’ll work…
I thought it was a great speech. I did hear a lot of apprehension from some in the media about the short time AOC was given to speak. I think it was a smart move. The far left will not break out in their happy dance for Biden, but allowing AOC and “the squad, including Omar” any presence is enough to cause moderate Democrats to consider Trump. If the far left succeeds, as the far right has, we are doomed for eternity. Problem for another day, let’s hope Biden runs the table in November.
I am loathe to post WaPo articles, but this one points to a long time blind spot for Dems (but, in the article there is a call for war against China)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/21/convention-shows-democrats-have-ceded-working-class-gop/
Those efforts at base mobilization came at a cost. There was virtually no effort to win back the working-class voters who voted twice for Barack Obama but defected to Trump in 2016. The reason Trump is president today is because about one-third of the nearly 700 counties that twice voted for Obama went for Trump in 2016. According to Nate Cohn of the New York Times, Trump won because he “flipped millions of white working-class Obama supporters to his side.” If you were a working-class Obama-Trump voter watching this week’s convention, you heard a lot about gun violence, racial justice and climate change, but not much directed at you. The message you heard was: Democrats are not interested in your support.
You’ve left something out of your comment.
“According to Nate Cohn of the New York Times, Trump won because he ‘flipped millions of white working-class Obama supporters to his side.’”
There is a tendency to assume that the working class in America is white. Please remember that the working class includes BIPOC workers as well as white people; in fact, if current demographic trends continue, it won’t be long before white people whose first language is English will be the minority in this country..
Its an important distinction, because it wasn’t policy that led white working class voters to Trump. It was racism.
On policy, the Democrats are light-years better than the Republicans. But when you cite an opinion piece by a former aide to Bush 2 and Rumsfeld, of course you get that false narrative.
That is one of the problems with today’s partisanship, damn the messenger and you get to ignore the message.
it is also a potentially fatal flaw of the Democratic Party to win 2020, this willingness to support BIPOC working class by calling out racism, but condemning all white working class who voted for Obama twice who voted for Trump in 2016 as racists. It is just the opposite of what the Republicans do, pitting white working class against all other working class people, and just as mean and cynical.
That’s why the Democratic Party will talk about race but not class, unless its the amorphous “middle class”. Of course many a BIPOC is working class. But most of the talk really is about getting more BIPOC people into the professional class, not raising the living standards, wages and benefits of working people of all races.
Unfortunately, our history demonstrates that appeals to “class” are defeated by appeals to “race”. It’s our fatal flaw. White “workers” seem more interested in being assured black “workers” are doing worse. Then they can rest content. Trump is appealing to race.
The Dem platforms of 2016 and 2020 would significantly help the working class. The platforms have never been so progressive; the party never so uniformly liberal. The Progressive Caucus is the largest in Congress, I think. As an extreme progressive, you have decided it’s not remotely enough, and you will dissent and object at every turn.
That’s your prerogative. But to deny the trend and treat it as phony is wildly misleading.
My experience among working class people of all races is that race issues become much less a factor if people feel the work they do is dignified, meaningful and well compensated. Unfortunately, we as a society have crushed the wages and benefits of working people of all races for forty years, both parties have supported this, which has greatly exacerbated race issues, working people feeling so helpless. Both parties maintain existing power structures by playing the poor against the poor. As in this thread of comments, white working class are demonized. Go to conservative websites and minorities and people of color are often demonized. Meanwhile income and power inequality seems to grow no matter which party is in power.
You say the platform is more progressive than ever. I see a tendency among democrats to demonize progressives and progressive policy with the same broad brush they paint fans of Trump. In this Pandemic we have seen the greatest transfer of wealth in history, even more so than after 2008, and yet I don’t hear either party complaining.
Or maybe it’s because race is a bigger factor in America than class is.
Or because the two are correlated.
You can’t talk about (social/economic) class without talking about race,
“The message you heard was: Democrats are not interested in your support.”
Yes, if you want to hear about a $15/hr minimum wage, rock solid guarantees about Social Security and Medicare and basic healthcare items like protections for preexisting conditions, next week is when you will hear them.
Never-mind about Trump’s plan to end the federal payroll tax that funds 50% of SS right now. He’ll repeal and replace SS and Medicare just like the ACA and make it better at half the cost.
That alone should make every working class voter abandon Trump immediately. The wage separation from poor to rich since 1980 is undeniable. The only saving grace for those on the losing end is the promise of a SS check and Medicare coverage during their later years. To now say: “maybe we need to trim that back a little, we’re a little short of funds” is a main GOP message. Thank you Paul Ryan. The folks (like me) who benefited on the other end of wage separation need to pay up on our promises through higher taxes to protect the workers who enabled our success. Go find some Republican’s who will agree with that thought.
And, as stated above, the DNC could have been 100% all in on every worker benefit imaginable and unless it also included: “And I am am going make these minorities thing it is 1950 again” he is not going to get many of those white working class voters. Too many are attracted to the message of “group XYZ screwed you and we are going to get even, big time” over “we’re all in this together, let’s solve our problems together”.
It’s going to take an army of straw men to defend the hate and carnage to be on display next week.
Well said, more or less, though I don’t know if it is a Democratic Party policy necessarily to raise the Federal Minimum Wage to $15/hr? If Biden as President does any little thing to make Social Security less than “rock solid” I trust you will be enflamed? As for Health Care costs, do you anticipate Biden or Trump are going to reduce Health Care Profits in the Stock Market? Which of course are in large part coming from bankrupting “the people” with premiums and deductibles and costs? But said profits are of course also bankrolling many a nest egg? Speaking of being in this together.
You puts your bets and takes your chances…
I just don’t get the dogged determination that everyone who works for United Health must be out of a job before health care progress must be made.
I asked this earlier this week and don’t think it generated a reply:
Medicare includes the ability for Seniors to go into the private insurance market and purchase “Advantage Plans” that allow for folks to choose a higher level of service to meet their needs/desires. Do you think these should be eliminated from Medicare as currently constructed? Carrying this forward into MFA could get unions that have traded wages for benefits for years to support MFA.
If Biden were to come out to today for Medicare for all it would certainly reflect a more left side approach than his current “build on the ACA”. And yet if it was MFA as we know Medicare right now it includes a role for private insurance. And we know that UHG does very well with its’ Medicare Advantage plans as the partner provider for AARP. And, rumor has it, they don’t see MFA as the end of their world, only a transition to “Advantage For All” that they can build on and continue their profitable existence.
A friend took me for a short boat ride around Wayzata bay on Minnetonka this week. It had been a few years since my last trip on the water. We passed some new construction on a lot I have a little history with: I attended an estate sale there in the mid 90’s at a large, 1950s rambler style house on this lot. I bought a chair. The house was pretty sprawling with lots of glass looking down in the lake. One of the nicest houses I had ever been in. I soon learned the reason for the estate sale: the house was leveled so a fellow who had a great idea for a new product that had greatly enriched him, could build a spectacular new and larger house on the lot. He moved in in the late 90s and likely enjoyed a great “life styles of the rich and famous” existence in his beautiful new stuccoed mansion. I guess he eventually moved to an equally fine home in FL or AZ and the house went up for sale. This time a member of a family who I have a little historical knowledge of purchased the house. The buyer’s grandfather started a small business in a MN small town before WW2. By the end of his active working life, through hard work, it was worth several million dollars. His son evidently learned a lot about that work ethic from his dad because he turned the several million into hundreds of millions and now the third generation has turned that into billions. And one member of that third generation bought the big beautiful less than 20 year old mansion and knocked it down to build an even bigger and grander home. Are those American success stories or the evils of capitalism run a muck?
One of William’s villains is Jeff Bezos who did this on bigger scale in a single generation. I know William passionately supports and cares for small businesses. What happens when hard work and luck and serendipity turns that small business into tens of thousands of employees? Should they be put out of business and some theoretical point in their growth?
No, they should pay their taxes, and their taxes should ensure that the workers who helped them achieve their riches have SS and Medicare benefits not at risk and even increasing. And if their billion dollar businesses violate anti-trust provisions that go back to the 1890s their should be consequences like what happened to Standard Oil under Teddy Roosevelt. (Secretary of the Treasury Elizabeth Warren may have some ideas on what to do now).
All this won’t happen even if President Bernie Sanders would just crank out a few executive orders. Our system, right or wrong, does not work that way. All of Trump’s executive orders will be undone by the end of 2021 leaving Stephen Miller to howl in the wilderness and Trump to smuggle out tweets from his prison cell.
Trump gave a tax cut, skewed to the most wealthy, during a time of unprecedented economic success. Totally unneeded. Why? Because that is what Republicans do. It is a core belief, tax cuts will always pay for themselves and no matter how much this is proven wrong, THEY AIN’T CHANGING.
And as any Republican will tell you, the core belief of the Democrats is tax and spend. Tax our fine successful friends living on the shores of Lake Minnetonka and their prosperous UHG executive neighbors and spend it on the SS and Medicare benefits of the workers who enabled their success. Will Biden do this? I don’t know. I’m OK with it, William would likely be happy and a few of our farther to left progressives here would maybe stop frowning quite as much.
You puts your bets and takes your chances…
Great story. The McMansionization of Minnetonka (and many of Minnesota’s lakes, for that matter) is a truly nauseating development, one which prominently displays the appalling taste and sensibility of our Upper Class in the Conservative Era. Ultimately, today’s rich don’t have any idea what even to do with all their wealth. As the Bevery Hillbillies theme song said: “Swimming Pools, Movie Stars!”
Of course, it’s all of a piece with Trump’s Vulgarian Versailles in the sky, which is apparently a fixture of envy (and not disgust) for most of today’s materialist Americans. If ever one wondered if we are indeed living in the Second Gilded Age, the construction of these monstrosities by the nation’s upper class all across the nation should prove it beyond debate. It is amusing that these bloated structures are so universally recognized as egomaniacal eyesores (even by the wealth-adoring masses!) that tearing one down after a mere 20 years elicits not a syllable of regret by anyone….
I regret that it is symbolic of a pathological waste-based culture, turning the earth into garbage and pollutants as central to materialism – growth, growth, growth!!!
But clearly I am an outlier, defending working people, pollinators and ecosystems.
Exactly.
And it would be fun and amusing to have a hidden camera embedded in the board conference room at the Center for the American Experiment where these fine folks slam their fists on the desk and blather on on about how unfair the system is to them.
And they really believe it, based in large part on homework assignments given to Junior staffers with the directive: “Prove this, somehow”.
Rationalization is the key to mental health.
I’ve got a ten-spot that Biden picks an alumnus from Goldman or Citi, and Warren gets the comparatively meaningless position of Sec of Labor, if she gets a cabinet position.
And I bet Bezos is worth $250 billion this time next year, Biden or Trump in the White House.
I care about small business. Hardly anyone but small business people do these days. I also think employees should have an equity stake in all businesses, if America is really about empowering the people and not just monopoly/oligopoly.
I’m betting that Biden is more likely to pick Warren as Secretary of Treasury then Trump is likely to pick Warren as Secretary of Treasury.
It’s the top ten percent (to be generous) who rely on stock dividends (even in the form of 401k’s) to fund their retirement rather than Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
After four years, those working class voters are still out of work.
Bloviation is not an economic strategy.
Thiessen is the Washington Post’s pet troglodyte; he’s not representative of their editorial board in general.
You ought to note that; not simply identify the Post as the source.
But that would spoil all the fun! Why not indirectly cite a right-wing extremist op-ed as the “Post” when you are trying to make a “progressive” (anti-Dem) argument?
If I posted an article from a Progressive about it would you ignore the information, as progressives get trashed here with the same enthusiasm as do “troglodyte” Republicans? No mainstream democrat is making the argument, so I can’t post one from a Dem.
The point is not who is writing the article. The point is, have Democrats used race to not have to talk about class so as not to have to do anything about income inequality between working class people and the upper crust.
I’ll assume your motives are pure, WHD. But:
1. The rightwing extremist has no interest in helping the working class–none.
2. The rightwing extremist has no interest in reducing the income inequality gap-none.
3. The rightwing extremist has no interest in aiding or advancing any progressive idea or value-none.
4. The rightwing extremist has no interest in reforming the Dem party or giving it advice to help it win the election–none.
5. The rightwing extremist’s sole goal is spinning a yarn to aid Trumpism and defeat Biden–that’s what pays his paycheck.
6. The one policy prescription the rightwing extremist makes is war with China–which you oppose strongly.
Other than that, great op-ed!
These threads need to be color coded because I get lost on what started all this in the first place.
So I retraced the steps and discovered that all of this should have ended after the first post and the first response:
WHD: Democrats don’t care about working folks like Trump does.
RB: Yes, Trump cares about working folks: white working folks.
Resolved….
“WHD: Democrats don’t care about working folks like Trump does.”
Why is it people here often paraphrase me inaccurately to make it sound like I said something I never would say? I have never said that, and never would. Never. I have said repeatedly, Dems have ceded working class issues for Republicans to take cynical advantage of. The Democratic Party does not care about improving wages and benefits for working people ANY MORE than Trump and Republicans.
I will offer to Trump however, that he initiated a conversation about bringing back America’s productive capacity, before COVID made that imperative. He has not done much to make that happen, and I don’t believe he is trying to do that for working people as much as for his crony oligarchs, but he did introduce the conversation in an environment where both parties had said about working people, about off-shoring, automation, illegal immigration, AI, in the way of Versailles “too bad, let them eat training.”
If you were to change out “right wing extremist” with “moderate Democrat” it would work well for 1-3, and #6 if you replace “China” with “Russia”.
I doubt that Thiessen is a Democrat.
I noted that there was a call to war against China in it. That should be signal enough for anyone paying attention that the guy is a Republican (if it were a call for war against Russia we could assume he is a Dem.)
Again, so the guy is a Republican. How are Dems supposed to beat Republicans in elections if you won’t even consider anything they are writing about, so as to understand your enemy? That is like principle one in the Art of War, know thy enemy as thyself, paraphrased.
A reminder: more voters voted against Trump than for him.
Those that did have had four years to reflect on what they got for it.
Remember, employment is a lot lower than it was four years ago, despite all of Trump’s prattling about all he’s done for the economy. As many economists have noted, the stock market is not the economy.
Some numbers from the NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/opinion/trump-convention-economy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
The “”ME” generation, whose mantra is “I got mine, you see about getting yours.” is still very much in power in this country today. Regardless of class (working, professional or leisure), Materialism is the mainstream religion. Until that changes, Trump’s promises of return to the “good ol’ days” by blaming “others” for our problems, shortages and failures will continue to be a siren song for many whites, whether Trump has any intent or plan to actually address our problems. The idea that “We’re all in this together” is an unwelcome concept.
If 40% of Americans are in the “ME” camp, and 20% stay home, as they did in 2016, Trump could very well win again.
All in all, an extremely successful “convention”, given the public health crisis that an unqualified ignoramus masquerading as “president” inflicted on the nation. It was an enormous undertaking to both imagine and realize such an utterly new format, the massive creative imagination of the American left prominently on display, as usual.
Meanwhile, the autocrat has dithered the summer away, and his team of reactionary courtiers has had about 4 weeks to try to plan what will be next week’s repulsive digital garbage heap. Dear Leader Trump is reportedly heavily involved in envisioning the event (because what else has he to do?), which should assure its twin stupidity and rancidity. It appears that Trump mostly wants to celebrate His Deplorables, and he is diligently seeking out the most worthy specimens to put on display, such as the gun-wielding St Louisian husband-wife duo..
I have to say that there is no way that Trump will fail to keep harping on the idea of Biden’s mental decline; that’s just too big a part of Trump’s order of battle to abandon. The fact that the decline mostly involves Biden being momentarily tongue-tied, as opposed to Trump’s own verbal thrashings (which involve him being an abject fool, conspiratist and unread ignoramus on every topic) will not be noticed by the complicit corporate media, who will love, love, love the personal attacks. Because that’s what a campaign is all about!
America is about to undergo the most horrendous and divisive convulsion masquerading as a political campaign in the modern era. It has to be, because that’s the monster Trump only chance. While Mr Black sees “racial justice” as a winner for Biden, that’s not the America I observe and have read about my whole life. I place the “racial justice” issue as an asset for Trumpolini (who has refashioned it, naturally, as “law and order” or “Burn Burn Burn!”); and it’s quite clear he has selected that as his chief issue for its maximal division of a racially pluralistic country, with a white majority that sees control of the political fate of the nation as its unalterable birthright.
Of the four great issues of the day Biden lists, ultimately the only one that the people of the nation (and earth’s) future will care about is climate change. As the evidence grows more grim with virtually every passing day (scientists inform us that Greenland has now passed the tipping point, with substantially more water pouring off each year than is being added as ice), at least Biden (finally) named it as an actual crisis. That’s something, I guess; a shame it was done 20 years too late. When Greenland’s ice sheet slides off, the global climate collapses. And so does the “economy”…