August 21, 2019--Biden's Women

I'm trying. Trying to get enthusiastic about supporting Joe Biden. But he doesn't make it easy.

It's not just that he's a gaff machine. Most can be written off as a version of charming. Biden being Biden. Like the other day when he mixed up Burlington Vermont and Burlington Iowa.  

Though even with that, benign as it is, and though the contest for the nomination is not "Jeopardy," it also leaves the lingering concern that these kinds of mixups are not just innocent slips of the tongue but are symptoms of, OK I'll say it, old age. He is 76 and at that not a young 76. 

More concerning is the kind of thing he said the other day at a gathering in Iowa of mainly minority voters when talking off the cuff about the academic potential of at-risk children. He said that "Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids." 

What is one to make of that? This is more than a slip of the tongue. 

But according to Monday's CNN/SSRS poll it didn't put a dent in black voters' support for him. His numbers in fact have risen since June, especially among white women, particularly older white women. They love Biden and appear to be wiling to stick with him almost no matter what.

I am not saying they are like the Trump people who would stand by him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Actually, maybe even more would vote for him if he did. Biden's supporters appear to be quite locked in. It seems as if they will remain committed to him almost no matter what.

Some of this increasing support for Biden is the result of women coming to his defense as they see him attacked by the other leading candidates. Especially, counterintuitively, the female candidates. 

(See the results of the CNN poll which show Biden increasing his lead over his closest rivals--now up by 15 percent over Sanders and 14 percent over Warren, while Kamala Harris has the support of just 5 percent of potential Democratic voters.)

The response to Harris is the clearest example of women coming to Biden's rescue  She challenged, some said attacked, some say disrespectfully took on Biden, Barack Obama's vice President, during the first debate. Her poll numbers blipped up for a day or two as did her campaign contributions, but since that time they have trended downward. Recently they have been plummeting.

Perhaps because as they thought about it, potential Democratic voters perceived her to be more angry than passionately engaged with the issues. 

Some of this may be the result of gender bias--what behavior is considered to be appropriate for a woman when confronting a man--some of it may be Harris's hard-charging style, but some of it is Democrats who want to win in 2020 seeing in Biden the candidate most able to defeat Trump. Still the overarching concern of most Democratic voters no matter their demographics and ideology. And thus his people are quick to protect him.

In a political environment where the conventional wisdom does not apply, some of the familiar realities still pertain--especially about race and gender. We are by no means a post racial society nor are men and women running for public office regarded equally. 

It is ironic that much of this is being played out through Joe Biden's candidacy, considering his history when it comes to women and minorities is far from without blemish.