So far,Trump is winning the democratic debates
Christopher Buskirk, editor and publisher of the journal American Greatness/
The New York Times
But Elizabeth Warren has revealed herself as a formidable adversary, and the president knows it.
Julián Castro framed the debate almost perfectly in his opening statement: The 2020 election will be won or lost in a handful of states, starting with Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and maybe a few others like Arizona, where I live. So the question for Democrats remains what it has been all along: Who can beat President Trump in those states?
That’s the thesis for the Biden candidacy. But last night showed that while Joe Biden, the former vice president, is still the one to beat, Elizabeth Warren remains the most interesting and potentially the most formidable Democrat in the race. If Mr. Biden stumbles, Senator Warren will be ready to make her move. There was no spontaneous clamor for a Biden candidacy. It was created. He was brought out of retirement because a lot of Democrats think he is purpose built to win those three key states. That’s why Mr. Biden didn’t have to win Thursday night’s debate outright. He just had to avoid disaster, show some signs of life and allow his supporters to continue in the belief that they can cover up his frequent gaffes and the inescapable effects of age and carry him to victory on a combination of a prodigious shower of campaign cash and a media establishment desperate to be rid of Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Biden is dogged by both Ms. Warren and her fellow senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders has plenty of money, is authentic in his beliefs and has a large but ultimately limited base of loyal supporters. He’s also widely despised by Democratic insiders. His campaign can go the distance if he wants to, but he can’t win the nomination.Senator Warren is a different story altogether. She’s smart, she’s serious and she has a certain nerdy charisma that attracts some people, though the flip side is that for others she reads as a hectoring know-it-all. She’s also energetic. Compared with her energy and ideas, Mr. Biden seemed like last year’s model. But I don’t think that deters his supporters, at least not right now.
The Biden candidacy is predicated on pitching swing voters, especially among the white working class and even more particularly among the millions of Obama-to-Trump voters, in battleground states. The idea is that he is a steady, experienced political hand who will bring about a return to normalcy and competence. But that’s a sham. He has never really accomplished anything in office. He has always been a supporting character in someone else’s show. It was true in the Senate, and it was painfully obvious during his years as vice president that he was an extra, not an intimate, in the Obama White House.
But somehow Joe Biden is always there, still standing, which has made him the patron saint of failing upward. Elizabeth Warren, by contrast, is offering a choice, not an echo. And her bold proposals, though I certainly do not support them, may prove more attractive and more difficult for Mr. Trump to counter in the states that will decide the election.
The bigger problem for Democrats is that the theory behind the Biden candidacy is wrong, probably because it is based on a Democratic anti-Trump talking point that has hardened into dogma. Mr. Trump, the argument goes, is America’s crazy old white uncle but America elected him anyway. Well, not America, the narrative continues, but downscale whites in the Rust Belt, the bitter clingers and deplorables who are rapidly becoming the Republican base as the Democrats become the party of the rich and their retainers. So if a crazy uncle is what it takes to win those states right now, then we’ll get our own crazy uncle and it just so happens his nickname is Uncle Joe, he was born in Scranton, Pa., and he was Mr. Obama’s vice president. What could go wrong? That’s the way public relations people think. It’s not the way voters think.
I’m skeptical of the mind-set that views everything as a straightforward demographic triangulation. It can be true, but only in the absence of a charismatic opponent. And Mr. Trump has a certain animal cunning and roguish charisma that make him a very effective campaigner. If Democrats select Mr. Biden as their nominee, he is going to run into a rhetorical buzz saw and campaign tempo that he is going to find difficult to counter.
Once the general election campaign really starts, the dynamics change from what we saw on the debate stage. And there the issues still favor Mr. Trump. Ms. Warren’s government monopoly on health care is a tough sell. She was right to say that she has never met anyone who loves their health insurance company, but not many people who have health insurance want to get rid of it. Gun control is very popular with the Democratic base, but much less so in western Pennsylvania and rural Michigan and Wisconsin, where this election may be decided. Likewise with the Green New Deal, reparations and the whole progressive social justice agenda.