THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019 N A
NEWTOWN, Pa. — Diane
LeBas, a 71-year-old substitute
teacher attending the Newtown
Democrats’ summer picnic on
Sunday, recounted how she was
tear-gassed protesting the Viet-
nam War. No one could question
her progressivism.
“But at the moment, I’m leaving
progressivism in the back seat for
pragmatism,” Ms. LeBas said
about the 2020 presidential race.
“We have to get rid of the guy
who’s threatening our core values.
For pragmatism, I would choose
Joe Biden.”
Among a circle of activists at
the picnic here in Bucks County —
a swing town in a swing county in
a swing state — there were many
nods. Ahead of the second round
of Democratic debates in Detroit
starting Tuesday night, the party
stalwarts were wrestling with the
old tug of whether to follow their
heart or their head in picking a
candidate.
For the moment, the head
seemed to be winning.
The same was true at a second
gathering further south on Sun-
day, in Delaware County. Unwind-
ing after a weekend of canvassing
for candidates in municipal races,
several Democratic volunteers
acknowledged that they were
more liberal than many Demo-
cratic voters, which helped ex-
plain the enduring appeal of Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr.
“It’s almost like two different
parties,” said Andrew Hayman,
28, a Democratic committee mem-
ber in the town of Upper Darby. “I
encounter it every day at the
doors: people who are excited for
Biden or they don’t have a candi-
date.”
Many of those Democrats —
whether they already have a pre-
ferred candidate or remain torn —
are hoping that this week’s de-
bates include more economic is-
sues and moderate points of view
than the June debates, where lib-
eral issues and arguments domi-
nated the two nights. Several
Democrats said that voters were
far more concerned about feeding
their families or ensuring their
children’s futures than they were
about issues like impeaching
President Trump.
Susan Turner, who complained
that the June debates did not in-
clude enough so-called kitchen-ta-
ble issues, said: “Jobs are cer-
tainly a concern of people. Min-
imum wage.”
At the gatherings in Bucks and
Delaware Counties, outside Phila-delphia, there was plenty of sup-
port for several candidates. In a
straw poll at the Newtown picnic
— held with Democratic-ap-
proved paper straws, not plastic
— the results were: Elizabeth
Warren, 15, Kamala Harris, 14, Mr.
Biden, 8 and Pete Buttigieg, 7.
Bernie Sanders earned just one
vote.
Julia Woldorf, a member of the
Newtown Borough Council, ar-
gued that Mr. Biden was a poor
choice if voters were trying to be
practical about the candidates.
She brought up Ms. Harris’s
sharp-scalpeled attack on him in
the first debate over his civil
rights record, which caught Mr.
Biden off guard.“He showed me he couldn’t re-
spond the way he should have,”
Ms. Woldorf said. “If Trump
throws something at him, how’s
he going to respond?”
There were echoes of the hand-
wringing among some national
Democrats over whether candi-
dates were lurching too far left-
ward to win with plans that would
end private health insurance or
decriminalize unauthorized bor-
der crossings.
“I think ‘the squad’ is leading us
too far to the left, and we’re alien-
ating a lot of folks in the middle,”
said Susan Turner, a retired engi-
neer who now owns the Green
Frog Bakery in Newtown, refer-
ring to the four progressive con-
gresswomen who have clashed
with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Steve Cickay, a retired I.R.S. ex-
ecutive, played down Democratic
fretting over whether Mr. Biden
was too old to motivate younger
voters.
“The disgust with Trump is so
overwhelming,” he said. “It’s not
going to be the Hillary deal in
2016.”
Elen Snyder, a 62-year-old full-
time activist at the picnic, was an
example of how passionate many
Democrats have become in the
drive to defeat the president. Ms.
Snyder said she divorced her hus-
band of 35 years in 2016 over his
support of Mr. Trump.
“He’s always been a Republi-
can, and I’ve always been a Demo-
crat and that was fine,” she said.
But with the rise of Mr. Trump, she
said: “He became an angry man.
It was like I was watching this
white guy who I thought I knew all
of a sudden become racist, be-
come all of the things Trump rep-
resented which I abhorred.”
Her favorite 2020 candidate, for
now, is Ms. Warren — though the
choice may indicate that headover heart isn’t universal. “My
Merrill Lynch adviser told me that
the only candidate he would be
against is Liz Warren because she
scares the financial community,’’
she said. “I delighted upon hear-
ing that.”
The Newtown activists, like
those in Delaware County, want to
elect more Democrats to county
and municipal offices in 2019 to
continue building a foundation for
2020 turnout, when Pennsylvania
will once again be in the eye of the
presidential storm.
Bucks County Democrats failed
to gain in the 2018 midterm blue
wave, when Representative Brian
Fitzpatrick held on to the only Re-
pubican-held congressional seat
in the Philadelphia region. But a
year earlier in Delaware County,
Democrats won their first county-
wide offices in more than a cen-
tury.
The issue of “Medicare for all,”
with its promise to eliminate pri-
vate health insurance in the ver-
sion supported by Mr. Sanders
and Ms. Warren, proved a sharp
dividing line among the Demo-
cratic activists.
“I don’t think that health care is
a human right. Sorry, I don’t agree
with Bernie on that; it’s a privi-
lege,” said Ms. Turner, the bakery
owner.
An hour south of Newtown,
where the second group gathered
in the home of Barbarann Keffer, a
candidate for mayor of Upper
Darby, Mr. Hayman, the Demo-
cratic committee member, ex-
plained that Mr. Biden is accept-
able even to Republicans he
meets. “He’s not hated,” he said.
“He’s a known quantity.”
That pleased Margo Davidson,
a Pennsylvania state representa-
tive from Upper Darby. “I’m Bi-
den all the way. I’m with Uncle
Joe,” she said in Ms. Keffer’scrowded living room, where vol-
unteers came in with stacks of
campaign literature for Demo-
crats on the ballot in November.
Ms. Davidson, the first African-
American to represent her state-
house district, noted that despite
Ms. Harris’s attack on Mr. Biden in
the first round of debates, black
support for President Barack
Obama’s former vice president
seems to be steady.
“I love Kamala,” she said, “but
we’ve got to get rid of Trump and
that’s more important to me than
any one personality.”
Michelle Billups, a candidate
for town council in Upper Darby,
blurted to a circle of activists:
“I’m going to be honest. I like An-
drew Yang.’’
Another Biden supporter, atypi-
cal for her age, was Raeleen Kef-
fer-Scharpf, 17, a daughter of Ms.
Keffer, the mayoral candidate. She
has watched debates and candi-
date forums on YouTube. Beto
O’Rourke, once thought to galva-
nize young voters, was a “viral”
candidate without staying power,
she said, adding that she’s “a
sucker for strong female charac-
ters in politics.” But she declared
Mr. Biden her top choice for now.
“I think he can win the presi-
dential,” Ms. Keffer-Scharpf said.
That concept of presumed elect-
ability, much maligned by candi-
dates not named Biden or the
other front-runners, nonetheless
held sway among activists.
Mr. Hayman said Democrats’
strongest message in 2020 ought
to be about expunging the Trump
years and returning the country
to stability. Democrats, he said,
should take a page from President
Warren G. Harding, a Republican,
and promise a return to normalcy.
“If we just talk about running
the government, I think we win on
that,” he said.Pennsylvania Democrats Are Wrestling With Following Head or Heart
By TRIP GABRIELPHOTOGRAPHS BY HANNAH YOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES‘We have to get rid
of the guy who’s
threatening our core
values.’
Diane LeBas, 71, substitute
teacher‘It was like I was
watching this white
guy who I thought I
knew all of a sudden
become racist.’
Elen Snyder, 62, activistdebates, I think it’ll be fine. But I
do think he looked kind of old in
this debate.”
As Mr. Biden prepares for the
debate this Wednesday night,
which will include a rematch with
Ms. Harris, he and his advisers
are grappling with how to make
sure he doesn’t appear so shaky,
cognizant that a repeat perform-
ance could do lasting damage to
his campaign and erode his ad-
vantage in the polls. Several ad-
visers emphasized that Mr. Biden
is in excellent health, and said he
will be more prepared to defend
his record and more willing to
draw contrasts with his oppo-
nents than he was at the June de-
bate.
But interviews recently with
more than 50 Democratic voters
and party officials across four
states, as well as with political
strategists and some of Mr. Bi-
den’s own donors, showed signifi-
cant unease about Mr. Biden’s
ability to be a reliably crisp and ef-
fective messenger against Mr.
Trump.
While the president’s own style
of communicating is often con-
tentious — his bellicose tweets,
his misstatement of facts, his de-
meaning language about minor-
ities and immigrants — he has a
largely united Republican Party
behind him. Mr. Biden is still try-
ing to prove himself to Democrats
as their best hope in 2020; many
of those interviewed were most
concerned about his agility, and
linked it to the sensitive subject of
Mr. Biden’s age.
Some voters couched their mis-
givings in euphemisms about
wanting “new ideas” or “new peo-
ple.” Some expressed fears of ap-
pearing ageist — a reflection of
the good will Mr. Biden enjoys
with much of the Democratic
rank-and-file. Others referenced
their own lives: If they have
“slowed down” upon reaching a
certain age, the thinking goes, Mr.
Biden must have as well. And a
few people were blunt.
“Seventy-plus is too old,” said
John Hampel, 68, of West Des
Moines, Iowa, who said he would
like to support a centrist candi-
date. Mr. Biden would fit that ideo-
logical bill, but Mr. Hampel, citing
his own age, continued, “I think he
should pass the torch.”
If elected, Mr. Biden would be-
come the oldest president in his-
tory at his inauguration, at 78, sur-
passing Ronald Reagan, who was
73 when he began his second
term. Among the other Demo-
crats running for president, Sena-
tor Bernie Sanders is 77 and Sena-
tor Elizabeth Warren is 70.
A Pew Research Center survey
from May found that only 3 per-
cent of Democrats and Democrat-
ic leaners said it was best for a
president to be in their seventies;
47 percent preferred someone in
their fifties.
Mr. Trump, 73, who would be the
oldest president ever if he wins a
second term, has faced questions
about his own physical and mental
fitness for years. He has handed
his critics unceasing fodder,
whether because of his stated
aversion to exercise or his pen-
chant for impulsive, offensive and
often-invented observations on all
manner of topics.
Despite all that, Mr. Trump is
seeking to turn Mr. Biden’s age
into an issue. He has sniped pub-
licly that Mr. Biden is not the polit-
ical athlete he once was, while be-
ing even harsher in private. Meet-
ing with a group of union officials
in the West Wing this year, the
president appealed for their sup-
port in part by tapping on his head
and saying, “Biden is losing it,” ac-
cording to a participant in the
meeting who disclosed the presi-
dent’s comment on condition of
anonymity.
His unsubstantiated attacks on
Mr. Biden, and more muffled dis-
quiet from some Democratic ac-
tivists, infuriate Mr. Biden’s
friends and advisers and are con-
trary to the view of Mr. Biden’s
doctor, Kevin O’Connor.
“Vice President Biden is in ex-
cellent physical condition,” said
Dr. O’Connor, a retired Army colo-
nel, who served as a White House
physician and was named physi-
cian to the vice president in 2009.
“He is more than capable of han-
dling the rigors of the campaign
and the office for which he is run-
ning.”
Biden aides grumble there are
far fewer questions about the age
of his fellow candidates in their
70s, noting that Mr. Biden is in
strong physical shape for his age.
“The person he’s going to be
running against is about the same
age,” said Representative Cedric
Richmond of Louisiana, a Biden
campaign co-chairman, in refer-
ence to Mr. Trump. He also noted
that his candidate is in better
shape and, alluding to the presi-
dent’s erratic behavior, is “of
sound mind.”
Or as John Morgan, a Florida
donor who hosted the former vice
president at his home for a fund-
raiser this spring, put it: “Can you
see Donald Trump jogging?”
Mr. Biden’s allies describe him
as a fitness fanatic and reasonably
disciplined eater who also enjoys
ice cream and cheeseburgers. As
vice president, he favored staples
like yogurt and juice, salads with
protein and for dinner, pasta or
fish, said John Flynn, who served
as military aide, personal aide and
as a senior adviser to the then-
vice president over the course of
about five years. Mr. Flynn added
that he sometimes briefed Mr. Bi-
den at the gym.
“I work out every morning,” Mr.
Biden said this month. “I usually
work on the Peloton bike, and I
lift.”His aides insist that Mr. Biden
has more energy than they do. At
a South Carolina fish fry last
month, allies note, he outlasted ri-
vals in greeting voters late into
the night. Senator Lindsey Gra-
ham, the South Carolina Republi-
can, has also vouched for Mr. Bi-
den’s vigor, saying on CBS in
April, “if you travel with Joe Bi-
den, you won’t think he’s too old.”
Mr. Flynn relayed a story about
a high-level, 48-hour trip to Iraq
and Rome in 2016.
“I think the only person that
didn’t sleep on that flight, besides
the flight crew, was him,” Mr.
Flynn said. Speaking of Mr. Bi-
den’s stamina more broadly, he
continued, “Even though he had
been up for as long as he had, he
still was the sharpest.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Bi-
den sometimes recalls an encoun-
ter with a heckler who called him
“Sleepy Joe” — a Trump nick-name for him — during a July 4 pa-
rade in Independence, Iowa.
But as Mr. Biden notes in the re-
telling, when he asked the individ-
ual if he wanted to jog along with
him on a steamy summer morn-
ing, the heckler demurred.
Amy Wright, an Independence
resident, told him as he stopped to
greet on her the curb: “If you can
run, you’re not Sleepy Joe.”
But for all of the energy Mr. Bi-
den can exude, he is also prone to
uneven performances. He is often
warm and empathetic toward vot-
ers — many of whom emphasized
that with age comes experience —
and was quick and humorous at a
news conference in Portsmouth,
N.H. this month.
Yet he also meanders and some-
times speaks so softly at events
that it can be difficult for attend-
ees to hear. After Mr. Biden
tripped over a few lines while ad-
dressing Planned Parenthood ac-tivists last month in Columbia,
S.C., one audience member,
Marda Kornhaber, tried to be deli-
cate.
“He didn’t come off, I’m trying
not to let the age thing ...” Ms. Ko-
rnhaber, a human resources exec-
utive from Charlotte, N.C., said be-
fore stopping herself. “But he did
seem like he bumbled a few times.
That leaves me a little sad.”
He also relays stories about his
decades in public life that can
seem off-key at best, and deeply
controversial at worst.
Some of Mr. Biden’s allies argue
that he has long struggled to be
succinct.
“He’s never been good at syn-
thesizing his thoughts into 30-sec-
ond or 60-second answers,” said
former Gov. Ed Rendell of Penn-
sylvania, who is 75. “He was just
as awkward in ’88.”
Where he shines, Mr. Rendell
said, is in interactions with voters.“If you’re a good politician, it re-
energizes you,” Mr. Rendell said.
“If you care about people, it re-en-
ergizes you. Joe’s a good poli-
tician, and he cares about people.”
As Mr. Biden prepares for the
next debate, scores of his support-
ers have offered the same unso-
licited advice to his aides: borrow
from the playbook of another sep-
tuagenarian candidate, Mr. Rea-
gan, according to campaign offi-
cials.
Some of these would-be word-
smiths have suggested invoking a
version of Mr. Reagan’s “there you
go again” from his 1980 debate
with Jimmy Carter a few months
before Mr. Reagan’s 70th birthday.
Others have urged Mr. Biden to
defuse questions about his age by
employing Mr. Reagan’s rejoinder
about not holding Walter Mon-
dale’s “youth and inexperience”
against him, a line that helped Mr.
Reagan bounce back from a lack-
luster first debate in 1984.
It is unclear if the former vice
president’s aides want him to say
anything that will draw more at-
tention to his age.
But Mr. Biden often says that it
is fair to raise the issue — and he
has sought to make light of it, even
joking about challenging Mr.
Trump to a push-up contest.
“I find it fascinating, they talk
about pass the torch, it’s the time,”
Mr. Biden said at a fund-raiser in
California, where he spoke in
broad strokes about the Demo-
cratic field. “And then they talk
about me being naïve. I thought at
least they’d give me credit that if I
was that old I wasn’t naïve.”Biden’s Supporters Worry
As Age Becomes an Issue
Aides were dismayed when
Joseph R. Biden Jr., above,
appeared tentative during his
presidential debate last month.
Some worry that a repeat per-
formance on Wednesday could
do lasting damage to his cam-
paign. Left, a Biden supporter
in Charleston, S.C.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEMETRIUS FREEMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESFrom Page AReid J. Epstein contributed report-
ing from Des Moines.
A subject pounced on
by rivals that gives
some voters pause.