The former vice president’s candidacy challenges assumptions about the party in the age of President Trump.
Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden speaks with Iowa voters at the Grand River Center in Dubuque in April.
At its heart, Biden’s campaign is a gamble that his rivals are wrong in seeing the current Democratic Party as liberal, angry and ready for revolution — a case he made in unusually pointed terms at a rally in Philadelphia on Saturday. Biden makes an appearance at the Community Oven in Hampton, N.H., on May 13. Biden has the support of 35 percent of Democratic primary voters, according to a recent Fox News poll, putting him 18 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders .
For Biden, though, the problem is largely Trump himself. The country just needs to get back to basics, he says — arguably an unsurprising view for a man who was at the center of power before Trump was elected. Shahid pointed to polls suggesting that Democrats support policies like Medicare-for-all, a health policy that Biden is not backing, along with the Green New Deal, a sweeping climate agenda. Nearly 70 percent of Democrats and independents said they want a nominee who backs Medicare-for-all, according to a recent Suffolk-USA Today survey.
“The left makes a lot of noise. They get lot of press,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Democratic National Committee member who is neutral in the Democratic contest. “When people vote in primaries and they know the general election is competitive, there is plenty of evidence to show they make sophisticated judgments about who can win.”
But Biden’s critics contend that it’s the former vice president who’s the greater risk for the party. His potential weaknesses haven’t been widely litigated yet by other candidates, though several have taken swipes at Biden in recent days, foreshadowing a larger brawl. And though Biden hasn’t unveiled a climate change proposal, he took heat from the left after an adviser described his plan to Reuters as one that would take the “middle ground.” Sanders responded on Twitter: “There is no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy.”
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