Watch: Joe Biden Tells Voters That He Is Going To Beat Himself in the 2020 Election
By C. Douglas Golden
Published May 26, 2020 at 7:34am
I don’t need to tell you it’s been an unusual election year. Beyond the extraneous circumstances surrounding the 2020 presidential campaign, however, here’s a curious thought:
One of the two major candidates just went on network TV and said that he was going to beat himself in November.
And beyond that, it’s difficult to say he was even wrong.
Let me explain. Joe Biden emerged from his basement in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday to appear on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He saw his shadow, so that means we get two more weeks of quarantine.
As usual, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee engaged in a bit of verbal infelicity, telling America he was going to beat himself come election time.
The answer came in response to a question about whether he could unite the party, given that a segment of it has broken off and drifted well to the left (supporting the likes of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts).
“Are you prepared now to say you’re going to govern as a progressive and enact programs in the mold of Sanders and Warren, and if so, what does that say to either moderate Democrats or independents or even some Republicans dissatisfied with President Trump?” co-host Joe Kernen asked the former vice president.
“I’m prepared to say that I have a record of over 40 years,” Biden said. “And that I’m going to beat Joe Biden. Look at my record. The fact is that some areas that I think, for example, I think health care is a right, not a privilege. I do not support ‘Medicare for all.’ I will not support ‘Medicare for all.’ But I do support making sure that Obamacare is around as a public option.”
This is all pretty accurate, just not the way Biden intended.
His record stretches back a little longer than he wants to admit; it’s quite a bit closer to 50 years at this point. That’s a problem for him, especially considering his interesting alliances with arch-segregationists in the 1970s and other positions that are considered faux pas in a Democratic Party that assumes history began yesterday and anyone who ever held positions contrary to liberal gospel at present is even worse than a Republican. That’s a problem for Biden, but he doesn’t seem to know it.
But yeah, that’s not what you’re focusing on: “I’m going to beat Joe Biden.” It looks like a gaffe. I’d argue it’s more of a Freudian slip.
Yes, Joe Biden will beat Joe Biden. He’s going to do it by saying stuff like “I’m going to beat Joe Biden.” He’s going to beat himself by forgetting who he is. And he’s going to do it by not being leftist enough for the progressives and being too far left for the rest of America.
“I do not support a, you know, forgiving debt loan for every single solitary person no matter where you went to school,” Biden told Kernan. “But I do support the idea, if, in fact, you have student debt as a consequence of going to a public university and your income is under $125,000, it should be forgiven. I do believe that anyone going to school that in fact goes to a public university and/or community college, they should be able to go for free if income is under $125,000.”
Have fun getting those Bard College votes, Uncle Joe.
This is the Catch-22 of the Biden campaign. If you keep him at home and limit his media appearances, it allows President Donald Trump to suck up all the air in the campaign room.
That kind of, sort of worked for Biden when the coronavirus panic was mounting and Trump’s media briefings were perceived in the media as being divisive.
However, the period where everything seemed to be hitting us all at once is over; we’re starting to live with the disease, strange and restrictive as “the new normal” may be. Trump never made as many unforced errors as Biden believed he would, and hiding the Democratic nominee in his basement until November isn’t going to work.