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Speaking this week in Montana, former vice president Joe Biden pronounced himself the “most qualified person in the country to be president.†Lest anyone doubt that he is planning on running, he said he is consulting with his family and will make a final decision within the next six to eight weeks . . .. . . The conceit of Biden’s candidacy is not so much experience — 36 years in the Senate, eight more as vice president — as an ability to appeal to parts of Trump’s base. Biden is one of the few Democrats with credibility among the white working-class voters who abandoned the Democrats to elect Trump in 2016. Like Trump’s, his predilection for bluster endears him to these voters, even as it horrifies high-minded coastal elites.Also like Trump, Biden has a famously loose relationship with the truth . . . 31 years later, two years into the Trump presidency, the political landscape looks much different. Americans — or at least the rock solid 35–45 percent of the electorate that supports President Trump — don’t seem to care that their standard-bearer isn’t always faithful to the truth so long as he is skewering the people that they despise. While Democrats claim to abhor Trump for his willingness to play fast and loose with the truth, Biden has been using the same sort of tactics for decades . . . . . . Prior to Trump’s entry into politics, even many Democrats dismissed Biden as too big a gasbag to take seriously as a presidential contender. But Trump has made being a barroom blowhard a viable political identity, and it is Biden who is most poised to benefit. If, two years from now, he is finally able to capture the prize he’s been seeking most of his adult life, he’ll owe the man he defeats in the process a huge debt of gratitude.
