Biden can win for progressives
Joe Biden has consistently failed to give a compelling answer to one question: “Why are you running?” It dogged his campaign—the only answer he could really muster was to defeat Donald Trump. While candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren envisioned fundamental changes to American society, Joe Biden’s vision was, essentially, to defeat Trump, followed by a “return to normal.” To his credit, he did issue a list of policies he would enact. But in many aspects, it was a new coat on the same platform that Hillary Clinton ran on in 2016, with standard platform fare like “protecting and expanding Obamacare” and “rejoining the Paris Agreement.” Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders was proposing Medicare for All and a Green New Deal to address the same issues. The wide scopes of other Democratic candidates’ policy agendas made Biden look comparatively tunnel-visioned.