As former Vice President Joe Biden continues his touching apology tour and apparently nears an announcement that he’ll run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, we feel a measure of sympathy for the man.
For all of the reasons for which he can be criticized, and will if he becomes a candidate, being a warm and somewhat handsy man should be among the least of those.
Oh, we understand and sympathize that many women would never want to have the type of friendly, avuncular greetings Biden has too often bestowed, and that perhaps he should have relished those only on women with whom he already is a close friend, but he is not being accused of being Harvey Weinstein or even former U.S. Senate contemporary Al Franken.
As a candidate, the Delaware political lifer – though stained by serving with the left-drifting former President Barack Obama for eight years – could legitimately claim the Democratic middle. It’s such a wide area now, between actual centrists and the rest of the Democratic field on the fringe left. And he once held some center-left positions, including voting for a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade, voting for the Hyde Amendment that prohibited most federal funding for abortions and voting against partial birth abortions.
A successful Democratic candidate, after all, will need to pick off moderate voters who cast a ballot for President Donald Trump in 2016. It will be difficult for any of the fringe left candidates – the Bookers, the Warrens and the Harrises, for instance – to do so. They’ve already geared their candidacy to such radical positions on certain issues that they’ll get few moderates. Biden, on the other hand, could.