All of the Democratic presidential primary candidates had issues, but I was surprised when, in the end, I settled on Joe Biden, Good Old Joe. And what it came down to was a desire for normalcy.
I know Joe has said and done some stupid things, but I found that in the end I did not want to support another angry white person. Don’t get me wrong. I will vote for Bernie Sanders if he becomes my party’s nominee, but my reservations about Bernie were greater than my reservations about Joe.
Freelance journalist Edgar Allen Beem lives in Brunswick. The Universal Notebook is his personal, weekly look at the world around him.
Maybe it’s just the age thing. Young people tend to support Sanders because they want radical change. Older Americans, like myself, broke for Biden because they want a return to stability and civility after four years of chaos and incivility under Donald Trump.
From extreme capitalism to extreme socialist democracy is the wrong move at the moment. And I’m not sure why anyone thinks Sanders can deliver on his promises any more than Trump could.
I believe everything Bernie believes – the system is rigged in favor of the rich, we need universal health care, free public higher education, the green new deal – but I do not believe 1) that Bernie Sanders can beat Donald Trump, 2) that he can accomplish his agenda if he does, or, 3) that he can unite the American people. Good Old Joe can do all three.
I’ve always seen Bernie Sanders as a one-trick pony. Economic injustice is all he knows. I found it tedious and wrong of him to repeatedly argue that “the Democratic Establishment” doesn’t want him to be the candidate because he will deliver economic justice. As if! He almost seems to be repeating the tired GOP lie that Democrats want to keep people poor and powerless so they will be dependent on the government.
It is also demonstrably wrong of Sanders to repeatedly argue that he is the leader of a multi-racial movement. The Biden surge was a wave of moderate black voters who never warmed to progressive Bernie.
One real danger in November is that Trump will be re-elected by default because Biden supporters won’t vote for Sanders and/or Sanders supporters won’t vote for Biden. That’s pretty much what happened in 2016 when a lot of Sanders supporters failed to support Hillary Clinton. Nationwide, more than 1 in 10 people who voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary ended up supporting Trump in the general election. Trump’s narrow margin of victory was in part a function of Sanders defectors and Sanders supporters who stayed home.
Donald Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus outbreak, but his failings as a human being and as a leader have made the pandemic worse, his dishonesty begetting huge market fluctuations and panic buying. With any luck, the vast majority of Americans now know what happens when they elect a leader who has no leadership qualities and the U.S. government is in the hands of people who do not believe in government.
The greatest danger come November, however, is that we won’t get to vote at all. Watch how the remaining Democratic primaries are handled in this new age of social distancing. Then see if you can imagine Donald Trump invoking the public health crisis to postpone the November election and prolong his reign of ego and error.
Joe Biden can’t become president fast enough.
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