Joe Biden Says Stupid Things. And Nobody Cares.
By: Eric Medlin
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Politics, History, Joe Biden, Donald Trump

Joe Biden Says Stupid Things. And Nobody Cares.

His critics need a different approach.

Joe Biden at a recent Democratic debate. Source: Boston Herald

Joe Biden is sloppy. He makes comments without fully considering the context or how they might be interpreted by others. Biden speaks off the cuff more often than a politician ever should. A comment from last Friday illustrates this tendency. On the popular The Breakfast Club radio show, Biden said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” Biden faced immediate pushback from all sides of the political spectrum. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called them “truly offensive,” and the Trump campaign tried to turn outrage over the message into a sustained political controversy. Former Bernie Sanders staffers and even longtime Biden supporters voiced their displeasure as well.

Not surprisingly, the controversy had died down by Monday. Political commentators had moved on to criticisms of Trump’s golfing and further debate on how to respond to the coronavirus. No serious political commentator believes that this episode will cause a temporary blip in Biden’s poll numbers, let alone a significant move. But this episode, minor as it is, serves as an example of why Biden continues to persevere even as he also continues to make stupid comments.

The majority of Biden’s political problems have stemmed from a combination of hubris and laziness. In the 1980s, one sloppy mistake nearly ended his career. He decided to plagiarize details in a speech from a British politician. The revelation derailed his campaign in 1988 and gave him a reputation for exaggerations and mistakes. Biden sat out three presidential contests after that year.

But by 2008, Biden’s campaign style lost its toxic qualities. His gaffes and poorly considered remarks were subsumed by his glowing personality and friendly traits. After a rocky primary season of his own, he became an essential part of Barack Obama’s campaign, an experienced, unpolished complement to the future president’s well-tailored approach. In this role, gaffes became proofs of authenticity. It helped that several of those gaffes were expressions of sincerity that helped push the Obama presidency in the right direction, such as Biden’s comments on same sex marriage in 2012.

In 2020, gaffes are one of the reasons why Joe Biden has been so successful. He has cultivated a personality in which mistakes and missteps show his authenticity. Being authentic, to many Democratic voters, makes him the opposite of his losing predecessor, Hillary Clinton. Democrats believe that critical swing voters in the Midwest will want an authentic man of the people like Joe Biden, and they are the reason for his remarkable primary comeback in March.

In this context, making a stupid comment, and having that comment broadcast and criticized, actually adds to Biden’s appeal. Like Trump before him, Biden has taken advantage of the news media’s approach to political scandal in an election year. The media has no choice but to publicize his gaffes and the reaction to them by his enemies on both the right and the left. This situation is why so many writers online are confused by Biden’s success. They see the stupid comment and the backlash, but fail to make the connection back to Biden’s popularity and are therefore dumbstruck when he remains stable in national polling.

Simply making ill-advised statements will not derail the Biden campaign just as it never derailed the Trump campaign. Authenticity is a major reason why Biden was able to capture the Democratic primary. Instead of focusing so closely on Biden’s problematic comments, Democrats who want to influence their nominee need to focus on the policy proposals and campaign positions that will not fall out of the news cycle in a few days. These tenets of the Biden campaign are not well-known or essential to his appeal. They also cannot be as easily co-opted by unscrupulous right-wing commentators. Changing Biden’s penchant for offensive comments will not be possible over the next six months. But changing the policies he will commit to before taking office might.