FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
“You may like another candi-
date better, but you have to look at
who is going to win,” Jill Biden
told a group of educators in New
Hampshire, in a bracing acknowl-
edgment that her husband does
not electrify the Democratic
masses.
“Your candidate might be bet-
ter on, I don’t know, health care
than Joe is,” she said, “but you’ve
got to look at who’s going to win
this election. And maybe you have
to swallow a little bit and say,
‘Okay, I sort of personally like
so-and-so better.’ But your bottom
line has to be that we have to beat
Trump.”
As the Democratic primary
campaign trundles on, Biden is
winning polite applause from au-
diences that respect him but
clearly are not as fired up by his
presence as are crowds for other
candidates. He has made verbal
miscues nearly daily as his more
disciplined opponents hew close-
ly to their chosen messages.
And yet his standing atop the
polls as the candidate seen as
most able to defeat Trump —
including in key states needed to
secure the presidency — has been
an enduring aspect of an other-
wise volatile primary contest.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and
other Biden opponents have
sought to poke holes in the elect-
ability argument.
“Can’t we have bigger aspira-
tions than that? Beating Donald
Trump is the floor, not the ceil-
ing,” Booker said during an Iowa
Federation of Labor event near
Des Moines on Wednesday.
“We need a candidate that is
not the safe bet,” he added. “We
need the candidate that can speak
not just to the head but to the
heart and to the gut.”
Yet Biden’s argument is reso-
nating with some voters, based on
interviews with a dozen undecid-
ed Iowans who attended his
events over the past two days.
Some see him as the candidate
most likely to appeal to white
voters in the upper Midwest who
flipped to Trump. Others say they
value his moderate positions on
issues and a tone they find unify-
ing.
Biden also has held on so far to
his popularity among black vot-
ers, making him the only top
candidate with dual strengths.
BIDEN FROM A
“He’s the most electable,” said
Tim Weil, a 64-year-old farmer
from Prole, a town about 20 miles
southwest of Des Moines where
Biden held an event Tuesday in a
barn. “That’s the whole point.
Doesn’t do you any good if you
can’t get elected.”
“If Trump wasn’t president,
maybe I’d be interested in some of
the other candidates,” said Karen
Fulfurd, a 62-year-old health in-
surance compliance analyst from
West Des Moines who attended a
rally in Urbandale. “But this is a
different kind of election. The
stakes are just too high.”
Despite his persistent lead in
the polls, Biden often has been an
unsteady campaigner.
His campaign aides insist he
and they are unconcerned about
his frequent gaffes, but there is an
attempt to prevent more of them
— lest the occurrences spiral into
a more threatening conversation
about whether they’re becoming
more common because of his age.
(He will be 77 in three months.)
Asked Tuesday whether he had
considered a one-term pledge —
something that John McCain
thought about in 2008 — as a way
to dispel questions about his age,his answer was succinct: “No.”
Biden used a teleprompter in
his appearance in the barn in
Prole, even though his speech
included many of the familiar
lines he always delivers, and he
often seemed to ignore it.
He had one at the next stop,
too, although its limits were soon
obvious: He suggested that the
1968 assassinations of Robert F.
Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Lu-
ther King Jr. had occurred in the
late 1970s. He seemed to correct
the miscue but then suggested
women wouldn’t remember the
history.
“None of you women will know
this, but a couple men may re-
member,” he said. “That was the
time in the early late ’60s, the
early ’60s and ’60s, where it was
‘Drop out, go to Haight-Ashbury,
don’t get engaged, don’t trust any-
body over 30.’ I mean, for real.
What happened to them by the
early ’70s, the late ’60s, there was
a whole generation that said
‘Enough.’ The war in Vietnam was
underway.”
While the clip made its rounds
on social media, those who at-
tended the event did not seem
fazed.“It would be difficult for any-
one in this position to be perfect
all the time,” said Dave Houge, a
67-year-old blacksmith from
Grimes, Iowa.
“Most of the presidents have
been old,” said Juli Jarecki, a
45-year-old vocational specialist
from Waukee. “I don’t have a
problem with it. It’s the ability to
lead by example. With age comes
wisdom.”
“His aren’t malicious gaffes,”
said Frances Pottinger, a 71-year-
old retired school administrator
from West Des Moines. “He’s fine.
If he’s making a gaffe, it’s not
intentional.”
Whatever his rhetorical mis-
steps, Biden at each stop makes
the campaign about his standing
as the candidate best equipped to
beat the president. While he
pleads for unity, in the country
and in his party, he has sharpened
some of his criticisms of Trump in
recent days.
“Donald Trump inherited a
growing economy from the
Obama-Biden administration
just like he inherited everything
in his life,” he said. “And now he’s
squandering it just like every-
thing he’s inherited.”But to the dismay of some
Democrats, Biden seems to iso-
late Trump from the rest of the
Republican Party, on the belief
that if Trump is gone then Repub-
licans will be ready to work with
the opposing side.
“If we defeat Donald Trump...
you’re going to see, as we say in
southern Delaware, an altar call.
You’re going to see people all of
the sudden see the Lord,” Biden
said Tuesday. “Because they’re not
going to be able to be intimidated
by a man who will be venal and go
after them personally. I’m not
promising you there will be a
newfound kumbaya moment
where everybody loves each oth-
er. But what’s broken is our poli-
tics, not the system.”
When Biden was asked Tues-
day how badly he wants to be
president, he did not say anything
about himself — it was all about
Trump.
“I think it’s really, really, really
important that Donald Trump
not be reelected,” he said, before
listing a litany of problems with
the current White House occu-
pant. He raised his voice and
jabbed his finger.
“Come on, man!” he said.But why him?
“Things I’ve done my whole
life,” he said. “I don’t know any-
body who knows almost every
other world leader. I don’t know
there’s anybody who’s negotiated
internationally like I have. I don’t
know — there may be. And they
may rise to the occasion. I’m not
suggesting they’re not. They’re
really good people. But I think at
this moment in time, I’m the most
qualified person to do it.”
“Could I die happily not having
heard ‘Hail to the Chief ’ play for
me?” he asked. “Yeah. I could.
That’s not why I’m running. The
irony is the longer I’ve been
around, the less that appeals to
me. I’ve watched up close and
personal what eight years in the
White House is like. And I
watched it. And it’s not something
that I can hardly wait — to move
in the White House. But I tell you
what. I want to make those deci-
sions because I think I can move
the country in a direction that can
set us on a path for the next 30
years to lead the world.”
Earlier, addressing reporters in
the barn where about 100 people
had listened to him speak, he was
asked about the large crowds that
some of his liberal rivals had been
drawing.
“I don’t know what you’re talk-
ing about,” he said.
When told that Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.) had drawn
12,000 the previous night in Min-
neapolis, he blanched but quickly
recovered.
“I’m drawing as big of crowds
— bigger than anybody,” he said.
“Have you seen anybody draw
bigger crowds than me here in
this state?”
Repeatedly, reporters replied.
Later he turned to the Fox News
reporter who had posed the ques-
tion.
“I know you’re going to go after
me no matter what,” he said. “And
it’s okay, it’s good. I’m a big boy. I
can handle it. But you know, I
mean, like, I notice, you didn’t ask
me why I’m ahead in all the polls
still.... I notice you don’t ask me
those things — it’s okay. Because
they don’t matter. Because this is
in fact a marathon.”
But his campaign had just re-
leased an ad touting those polls,
he was reminded. Should those be
ignored as well, a reporter asked?
“You already do,” he said.
[email protected]Biden camp plays the electability card: ‘You have to look at who is going to win’
MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST
Joe Biden speaks to a fellow 2020 hopeful, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding this month in Clear Lake.We Build Trust &
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