In a primary with so many firsts and so much unknown, one thing we should all be able to agree on is that no matter who the candidate or what their policies, the most important job of the party is to nominate the strongest candidate to take on Donald Trump. The Supreme Court depends on it. Our very civil liberties could depend on it for the rest of our lives. The environment depends on it. The poor depend on it. So without further adieu, I will offer you this fresh poll out of must-win Florida, from Florida Atlantic University:
If you want a longer, stronger case to support my belief that this poll is no outlier, and that no, Biden is not the best candidate to run against Trump (despite holding a very solid lead amongst Democratic primary voters in Florida, per the same poll) I would also humbly direct you to this Guardian piece, entitled “Stop saying Biden is the 'most electable'. Trump will run rings round him (Did we learn nothing from 2016? Trump is savagely effective at destroying establishment politicians – and Biden would lose)”:
Supporters of Joe Biden are unlikely to be persuaded by most of the common criticisms. They know he can be rambling and unintelligible. They know his record is unimpressive and that he doesn’t really have “policy proposals”. None of this matters, though, because to them he has the most important quality of all: he can beat Donald Trump. Nothing you can say about the former vice-president’s record, platform or mental state matters next to the argument that he is the best hope Democrats have of getting Trump out of office.
There’s just one problem: it’s a myth. It is a myth just as it was a myth that Hillary Clinton was a good candidate against Trump. Biden is not, in fact, the pragmatic choice. He would not beat Trump. He would lose. And we must say this over and over again. Forget his flubs. Forget his finger-nibbling. Biden would be crushed by Trump. If you want Trump out of office, don’t support Biden.
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He has been in Washington since the age of 30, representing Delaware, the “capital of corporate America”. He is infamous for his connections to the credit card industry, and he has lied about his degree of support for the Iraq war. Even Matthew Yglesias of Vox calls Biden the “Hillary Clinton of 2020” for his corporate ties and war support. It is worth remembering what being the “Hillary Clinton” of anything means in an election against Trump.
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One reason Democrats are bad at politics is that they concern themselves too much with facts and not enough with impressions. With Clinton’s “emails scandal”, they tried to show Clinton had not technically violated the law, but having Barack Obama’s FBI actively investigating Clinton for possible criminal wrongdoing looked terrible regardless of the facts.
Left-leaning journalists and pundits love to “fact-check” Trump, as if proving that he has lied is in itself persuasive. But 2016 should have showed us how powerless “debunking” is next to “optics”. If you have a Democratic candidate who looks really corrupt, it doesn’t matter if they’re not. People don’t trust the press and they don’t trust politicians.
Imagine Biden running against Trump. Trump will run ads like this, over and over. Good luck responding. Remember that time you have to spend defending yourself against Trump’s accusations is time not spent talking about issues that affect people’s lives. And Biden has already shown little interest in drawing people’s attention to the areas where Democrats should run strong against Trump, such as healthcare, taxation, working conditions and the climate crisis.
These are just my excerpts, please go read the whole thing, and then, please, consider supporting Bernie Sanders. And if you do, please consider reaching out and persuading some of your Biden-supporting friends with the information therein.
We all want Trump out of office. With his incomparable small-donor fundraising prowess, machine-like message discipline, popular policies, political movement/energy, and likability as a person (highest favorability rating amongst the Dem field right now), Bernie Sanders is the best horse to bet on in that endeavor.