Joe Biden's decision to abandon the Hyde Amendment is an interesting one. Biden has positioned himself as the Clinton of the 2020 nomination. That would be Bill Clinton in 1992, not Hillary in 2016. He has decided that the road to the White House leads through the center of the electorate and that enough people will support him based on his relationship with Obama to carry him through the primaries.
The Hyde Amendment outrage caught him by surprise apparently. And that's odd. His revamped position makes perfect sense, but why did he need a backlash to get there? I've worried a lot about Biden. While I think he would have beaten Trump in 2016, I worry about what sort of president he would be in 2021. Democrats have the advantage of a supremely unpopular president and the potential to win back the Senate and hold the House. That could allow for major changes in infrastructure and the tax code. But larger changes - like immigration reform, abortion rights and climate policy - will likely require changing things like Senate filibuster rules.
Biden's staking out a claim in the center might win him an election, but if he can't read the temperature of the Democratic electorate, he could squander some of the mobilization that Trump has created left of center.
There's other concerns: his closeness to the banking industry, his age, his career as a poor presidential campaigner, but while he connects with many voters - especially African Americans - because of his connections with Obama, he seems to lack Obama's ability to read his base.
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