Biden Survives, So Biden Wins

All night long, almost every candidate on stage aimed their attacks at Joe Biden. Early on, Kamala Harris referred to him as “Senator Biden,” a perhaps not-so-accidental demotion. Julian Castro, Bill de Blasio, and Cory Booker all went after him in rapid succession. Even Kirsten Gillibrand claimed that Biden opposed women working outside the home, a particularly implausible accusation. Here’s the good news for Biden: If tonight doesn’t do any damage to his numbers, he will probably cruise to the nomination. This is life as the frontrunner – you get attacked by everybody, all the time, on any issue that they think will get them some traction. Biden got socked in the jaw in the first debate, lost some ground in the subsequent polls, but gradually floated back to a solid lead. With the vast majority of Democrats living today having voted for him twice as vice president, and generally liking him and not all that bothered by long-ago not-so-progressive positions, all Biden has to do is not fumble. The weirdest aspect of the attacks on Biden was the suggestion that the Obama presidency was some sort of right-wing nightmare, full of draconian deportation enforcement, Americans desperately yearning for health care and having no way to get it, a Department of Justice that shrugged at police abuses . . . almost everyone assumes that Barack Obama will remain on the sidelines during this primary process. But if Biden is the lone defender of the Obama legacy, and every other upstart is painting the previous presidency as a failure, maybe Obama will come out and formally endorse his old wingman. Biden may have done himself some good for the general election, if he gets there. At one point during the debate on immigration, Biden declared, “The fact of the matter is, you should be able to, if you cross the border illegally, you should be able to be sent back. It’s a crime.” In today’s Democratic party, that’s a wildly controversial, reactionary statement. Trump will paint Biden as soft on illegal immigration; Biden will be able to say he stood up for immigration law enforcement when those around him didn’t want to hear it. Kamala Harris’s playbook was clear: attack Biden, attack Biden, attack Biden. But you wonder if the folks watching at home — to the extent they felt like watching three hours — started to tire of her relentless focus on Biden. Tonight, she let out all of her prosecutorial instincts. Every other answer was some version of, “you’re just wrong on this, Mr. Vice President. The reality is. . .” Harris is tough on offense but much shakier on defense. Some Democrats in this field appear to be having serious second thoughts about Medicare for All, and Harris looked incapable of defending her plan with any specificity.