0072 | May 20, 2019
2020 Democrats: Joe Biden, a Politician’s Politician
In most polling, Joe Biden is the front runner amongst Democrats in the 2020 Presidential primaries. But he’s a problematic candidate because many of his mannerisms put him out of step with the Democratic base. What kind of politician is Biden and can he secure the nomination?
| C.T. WEBB: 00:19 | [music] Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening, and welcome to The American Age podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor of The American Age, and I’m speaking to you from cloudy Southern California. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 00:29 | Hi. This is Steven G. Fullwood. And I am the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project, and I’m coming to you from a cloudy Harlem in New York City. |
| S. RODNEY: 00:39 | And I’m Seph Rodney. I’m coming to you from the South Bronx, a couple of steps away from Steven’s Harlem, actually. And I’m an editor at the arts blog Hyperallergic, and I am a part-time teacher, course instructor, at The New School. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:00 | This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of what we like to call intellectual intimacy, which is giving each other the space and time to figure out things out loud and together. Today, we’re going to continue our conversation about the 2020 Democratic field. Last time, we just kind of did a general overview and had a little fun with talking about sort of who we liked, who we didn’t like, who we all seemed to love, Elizabeth Warren [laughter], so. |
| S. RODNEY: 01:25 | Definitely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:26 | But we decided today that we’re going to talk about Joe Biden, who is the presumptive front-runner at this point. I think, actually, not just presumptive. I think he actually is ahead in most of the polls. And I think, as progressives, which I think everyone in this conversation probably qualifies as, wherever we fall in our particular opinions on specific policies, we definitely advocate for progressive policies when it comes to taxation, addressing social inequality, access to healthcare, the rest of it, certainly racial justice– or addressing racial injustice. So Biden is a problematic candidate if those are principles that you hold close to your heart. Right? So, I mean, he’s been around for a really long time, has had a number of controversies, has been involved in a number of things that seem very distasteful from the perspective of 2019 progressive politics. So we’ll talk about some of that and sort of where we stand on that and how we can sort of make sense of that candidacy in relation to our various political positions. Steven, I know you are fairly familiar with some of the more recent news items around Biden. Do you want to take us into it? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 02:57 | Well, I think to give it– I like the idea of looking at both Biden as a candidate but also within the context of the other candidates. And so, first, I want to sort of talk about Anita Hill, which I think is– for anyone who’s following Biden, he was a part of the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. And Anita Hill was the woman who accused him of sexual harassment in the workplace and that Biden was– I think he was the leader– am I mistaken? Right? He was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he presided over the confirmation hearings. And so Joe Biden, for the most part, needed to make some sort of public overture to Anita Hill just before he declared his candidacy mainly because reports say that he knew that this would be an issue for him, or a problem, in some of the articles that I’ve read. And so there’s a piece in the New York Times. The title is, Joe Biden Expresses Regret to Anita Hill, but She Says “I’m Sorry” Is Not Enough.” And this came out April 25, 2019, and I remember reading it and thinking about it in the context of restorative justice. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 04:15 | And for those of the listeners, if this is a new term for you, restorative justice repairs the harm caused by a crime. When victims, offenders, and community members meet to decide how to do that, the results can be transformational. It emphasizes accountability, making amends, and if they are interested, facilitated meetings between victims, offenders, and other people. And so what Joe did, he got in touch with Anita Hill through an intermediary, called her, and she says she wasn’t satisfied with his commentary. And what she said was the apology really wasn’t enough. She said that, “I’m really open to people changing. I will be satisfied when I know that there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.” And I thought that even though she didn’t use the phrase restorative justice, I think it was important for her to think about– she says she felt that Biden set the stage for the Kavanaugh hearings in the ways in which these women weren’t taken as seriously even though there was, because of the Me Too movement, a little bit more– I think the optics changed just a teensy bit, just a little bit. |
| C.T. WEBB: 05:22 | I feel like she was taken seriously by a good portion of the population, maybe not the senators that were questioning her. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 05:27 | Yeah. That’s what I was thinking too because– well, that’s kind of why I was getting at the actual hearing itself with the people there. She was taken seriously because of the Me Too movement and because of the strides that have been made to kind of think about the harm done to people who have been victimized. But I’ll get back to Hill. Hill said that Biden doesn’t– his apology really isn’t enough. It’s not enough to say, “I’m sorry for what happened to you.” And in other reports, Biden has said this, where he says, “I tried to protect her. I tried to limit the questions.” And then they show a clip of him saying, “They can ask this woman anything that they want.” He didn’t try to protect her. So I feel like he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. And so watching him sort of manage his candidacy, which for me is less policy building and more about the fact that– [his?] electability. That seems to be the phrase that’s bandied about when it comes to his candidacy. So I kind of want to talk to you guys about what you think about Biden and then kind of loop back around some more questions. |
| S. RODNEY: 06:33 | Go ahead, Travis. |
| C.T. WEBB: 06:34 | Seph, do you want to jump in? |
| S. RODNEY: 06:34 | No. You [go ahead?], yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB: 06:35 | So I have a couple of thoughts. So restorative justice is, I would argue, undoubtedly more effective when it comes to healing communities. And there’s plenty of research around that, and there’s anecdotal stories around that as well. But we live in a society that is on fire with retributive justice not only in our state and institutional practices but culturally as well. We want people to be punished for their transgressions. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 07:17 | Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 07:19 | And so I think that that makes Biden’s calculation difficult from a practical point of view. And I don’t know if he’s thinking about it this way. He may not actually feel sorry. It may have been a bullshit move. I don’t know [crosstalk]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 07:29 | Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 07:31 | But if he is and he is attempting to calibrate his response, it becomes– I don’t know if you’ve ever– I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten– of course, you have. Have you ever gotten into an argument with someone in which you are willing to accept your errors and faults, but they are unwilling to grant you the same courtesy? So if you say, “Oh, yeah. No, I shouldn’t have done that,” they jump on that. “Yeah. You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you do that?” not willing to acknowledge their own part in the harm. Is there any doubt for you, Steven or Seph, that if Biden were to more completely own the injustice that was visited on Anita Hill, which I think– let’s just call it an injustice. She was treated shabbily. She was treated wrong. She went to Yale Law School. This wasn’t just some random– and I don’t mean to validate her because of her education. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 08:30 | Right. Right. Thank you. |
| C.T. WEBB: 08:31 | No, no, I don’t mean to do that. I’m just saying– no, no, and that’s a fair thing to push back on. But I’m just saying, on top of all of that, this is the most credible of credible witnesses. Right? I mean, if you are in a court of law, right, if you’re calling a character witness, the court is going to take someone like that very seriously. And she was treated very, very poorly, and so what was done to her was wrong. But do you actually see, if Biden owned that in a more fulsome way, that that would play well in today’s cultural-political arena, given who the president is, given how rabid the media is for negative stories? I don’t. I’m skeptical. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 09:17 | That’s a really good question. Seph, do you want to answer it? Because I have a couple things to say about it, but I wanted to give you an opportunity. |
| S. RODNEY: 09:23 | Thank you. Thank you for that. I do think that the question is an important one, but it’s one based on political calculation. And essentially, what that does for me is it just sort of puts me back in the ditch because Joe Biden, if nothing else, is a very calculating political animal. We know this about him. And so you’re asking him to make a kind of political calculation and determine whether him acting from a place of integrity is going to play well. For me, it’s sort of neither here nor there because I feel like all his decision-making comes from that place, “Is it going to play well? How is it going to increase the chances of my candidacy?” I’m actually much more interested– and I know that I’m dodging the question, essentially, by answering it that way. But I really do feel that it’s all of one piece, for me, for Joe Biden. Right? What I wonder or how I respond to him is more along the lines of recalling an old piece– it was maybe published five or six years ago. It was someone on his staff. I want to say his chief of staff maybe, but it was someone who basically wrote a mini-memoir. And I think it was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine. It was a piece. It was a whole piece. It wasn’t an excerpt. But he talked about the ways that he had changed up his life to serve this candidate, Joe Biden, to be on his staff, to essentially put his own life on hold in order to support– |
| C.T. WEBB: 11:11 | To do his job, basically. |
| S. RODNEY: 11:12 | Yeah. To do whatever he needed to do in order to become this sort of shining light that Joe Biden would become. And in the piece, he talks about how much he regrets it because Joe Biden, for him, he realizes is essentially someone who’s just a soul-eater. He just takes and takes and takes. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 11:33 | Yikes. |
| S. RODNEY: 11:35 | He just takes, and the sacrifices don’t matter, ultimately, to him. Right? He is glad for the adulation, is glad for the praise, is glad for the hard work, is glad for people to pick up his laundry for him and deliver his coffee to him and work through policy statements for him, but he doesn’t really care. That’s not how he’s built. This is what I gathered from what this person wrote. And I apologize for not being able to remember his name, but it just came to me. I read this stuff a few years ago, and I felt like at that moment that, “Oh. This is one of those people.” And I’m not saying that Joe Biden is evil. I’m not saying that. I want to be clear. I’m just saying that– |
| C.T. WEBB: 12:23 | This person is credible [crosstalk]? |
| S. RODNEY: 12:25 | Oh, right. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. But I am saying that, given that account and given what else I’ve seen of the way he’s behaved in the political arena, he seems less moral than the job requires, really. I think particularly coming on the heels of this presidency, having this degenerate in office, I think that the line has been slightly skewed so that now someone merely acting as a decent human being [laughter] will seem like a centrist. Right? And I feel that Joe Biden takes advantage of that. He will exploit that. I don’t know that he’s decent. I think that he operates from a place of, “How does this work for me?” And I don’t like that or trust it or value it. I think that’s what I want to say. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 13:24 | Wow. |
| C.T. WEBB: 13:26 | I think that’s probably true of all political candidates with a few very unusual exceptions. I think to succeed in politics, you have to be built a particular– politics in the United States, you have to be built in a particular way. And it’s very– not very clear. It seems clear to me that Joe Biden is built that way. Obama clearly had– certainly, there was no shortage of egotism on the former president’s part, but he seemed to be built slightly differently than other politicians. He wasn’t much for glad-handing. I mean, this was something that he was criticized for, and honestly, I think it’s something he should be criticized for. I’m okay with that level of selfishness and surface in a politician because, as I’ve said before in our conversations, making deals with the devil doesn’t scare me. It’s the zealots and the angels that terrify me. I’m fine with human messiness and baseline greed because I think, for most people, it’s wedded to a general sense of decency. I don’t think that’s true in our current president. But for Biden, I don’t need him to be anything other than regular decent and to feel a sense of responsibility for the office [crosstalk]. |
| S. RODNEY: 14:58 | So let’s get into this. Travis, let’s say he becomes the nominee and he’s elected president. Three years from now, what do you think the landscape looks like, politically and socially, in terms of the very things you were talking about last episode with regards to the needs we have, the social needs we have right now: universal childcare, Medicare for all, our foreign policy? What do you think that looks like under a President Biden? |
| C.T. WEBB: 15:30 | I have a very direct answer to this. I happened to think about it when I was pouring myself coffee this morning. I don’t think change comes from the president. I think change comes from Congress and the Senate. I think the legislature is what has to be transformed and sort of the entrenched moneyed interests in the legislature have to be broken through grassroots politics. I think we need a president to go along is what we need. I think when you look at the transformations in US history, that it’s not as if there have never been presidents– Andrew Jackson being an example on the other side, though– |
| S. RODNEY: 16:12 | Of a miscreant, yes. |
| C.T. WEBB: 16:15 | Yeah. Although a significant expansion of the middle class under Andrew Jackson, I was just reading yesterday. So I think where it has to come from is the legislature. That’s where it matters. We’ve seen the limitations of the presidency, and I’m fine with them. I don’t want a presidency that can just sort of come in and, by fiat, make a series of moral decisions to right the country. I don’t think that’s the kind of– that’s not the kind of system I want to live under. |
| S. RODNEY: 16:44 | But you’re living under a system in which the opposite has happened. I mean, let’s be clear. Since Trump has come in, he has actually used the executive to wrong a lot of people who– |
| C.T. WEBB: 16:57 | Yeah. I think too much power is– I think too much power is concentrated in the executive right now. |
| S. RODNEY: 17:01 | Precisely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:01 | And I think that needs to be recalibrated. And so, for me, to address your earlier question – what does it look like as a Biden presidency? – I hope that we have not entered the phase in which real political change is dependent on who is sitting in the White House. |
| S. RODNEY: 17:24 | Fair enough. Fair enough. |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:24 | Where I do think a president is critical, however, is in an area that is not as– it doesn’t seem to be as important to progressive, which is international politics. I am much more hawkish when it comes to international politics. I think that the arena of international politics is, as Clausewitz said, war by other means. And I think that the competing interests require a kind of stalwart faith in American interests and that American interests are, if not righteous, at least defensible. And so I think Biden would stand up for that stuff. I don’t know about Sanders. I worried about Obama in that way. I think there were some mistakes under the Obama presidency on the liberal side of it like the red line and things like that. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:23 | Agree. |
| C.T. WEBB: 18:23 | I think these are a mistake. I do. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:25 | Agree. Agree. |
| C.T. WEBB: 18:27 | And so, yeah, anyway. It’s a long-winded response, but that’s my answer. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:34 | So I just want to briefly go back to the idea that one’s political expediency or the moment, right, that one makes an apology, a public apology, is dependent upon– I want it to be thoughtful and more transformative. And I was thinking, “What would it have looked like for Joe Biden to say, ‘I met with Anita Hill, and we really had it out. And what I didn’t understand then leads me to these next steps or these kind of realizations or these kinds of things.'” So that restorative justice moment, I don’t want it to always looks like the moment, “It doesn’t look good if you do that, therefore your candidacy will be da, da, da.” Regardless if it’s a punitive moment or not, I feel like– not real change, but I feel like at least breaking open the imagination of what’s possible in public discourse. People were nasty before Trump showed up. There was a lot of dragging online and a lot of that. He just kind of made it– |
| C.T. WEBB: 19:39 | Absolutely. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:41 | I’ll say that, by this lead, to take a point– I don’t need a president or any figurehead at all to tell me how to be a human or to be kind to people. But what I’ve noticed and what seems to be clear– and I remember thinking when people say, “Oh, if he’s elected, he’s going to make it easier for white supremacists and other kinds of right-wing folks come out and say what they want to say,” and I was like, “Well, these things are already being said.” I couldn’t see it getting any worse, and I was really mistaken. I was really mistaken. |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:16 | So this is a measure– I forget what it’s called, but there’s a name for this psychological mechanism. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 20:21 | Really? |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:22 | It got rebranded the Trump Effect, but it’s not called that. |
| S. RODNEY: 20:24 | You mean gaslighting? |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:25 | Oh, no. I don’t mean that, but this is an aspect of it. |
| S. RODNEY: 20:28 | Oh. Oh, you mean the Stockholm syndrome? |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:31 | No. Not that one too. That’s a good one also. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 20:33 | Yeah. Those all fit. |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:33 | The modeling of behavior. When members of a community see behavior modeled in authority figures, that behavior does become more permissible. It’s been well studied in children and in adults as well. Maybe for the next podcast, if I can remember, I’ll look it up. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 20:56 | Please. |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:57 | This is a well-known mechanism. This actually is what happens. I mean, think about it from– I mean, you get it anecdotally when people say, “The culture of a company,” or whatever. You know, if you’ve ever worked at a place where the top has no integrity, it is absolutely infectious through the entire system. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:19 | Absolutely. Absolutely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 21:19 | Absolutely. And so I do think that it does matter. In that way, I do think it matters. I believe you, Steven, that it doesn’t matter to you. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it matters to Seph. I don’t think it matters to me. And the people that I’m close to, “No, whatever. An asshole sits in the White House, fine. Someone admirable sits in the White House, okay, good.” But for many, many, many of our fellow brothers and sisters, it does matter. And it matters enough that I worry about– to dovetail on Seph’s earlier question. In some ways, I’ve felt good about American institutions in relation to Trump. And in other ways, I feel like my purview is too narrow in that there is real damage and erosion that is taking place. And sort of like the termites, we can’t even really see the rot that’s potentially set in because of the presidency. I hope that’s wrong. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 22:24 | I hope you’re wrong too. But I only hope that you’re wrong in the sense that that potential of the erosion is also the potential for transformation and that people are moved to think more critically about healthcare or about things that matter to them and really learn how to articulate these things and find ways to resist or find ways to make things happen. And so that’s what’s exciting about [inaudible] these moments and these movements that have either been empowered or have been fueled by or started up by the Trump campaign and say, “No. This isn’t right. This man is incorrect. And his followers and the support that he’s getting from some Republicans and some conservatives, this is incorrect. This isn’t right.” And so I do think that– |
| C.T. WEBB: 23:11 | You liked a tweet, Seph, along Steven’s lines yesterday by Joe Walsh or something like that. |
| S. RODNEY: 23:17 | Oh, yeah. I did. Yeah. He just basically said, “This man’s a con man. I mean, look at him, honestly.” And Joe Walsh is one of the most red meat Republicans you can find. |
| C.T. WEBB: 23:29 | Yeah. Yeah. He’s probably pointing a gun at you right now. |
| S. RODNEY: 23:32 | Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 23:33 | Hilarious. |
| S. RODNEY: 23:35 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’ve responded to some of the stuff that he’s tweeted out, rhetorical questions like, “What’s wrong with you? What crawled up in you and died?” He’s infused completely by white settler ideology, but every now and again, he is right about the obscenity that occupies the presidency. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 23:57 | The obscenity, absolutely. |
| S. RODNEY: 23:59 | He is an obscenity. But let me get back to Joe Biden. One of the things that I think you’re saying, Steven– oh, one of the things I think you’re saying is that there’s a way in which Joe Biden is mercenary and he won’t be honest in a way that you want. You don’t necessarily need that for you, but you want it in the public record. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 24:20 | Oh, absolutely. |
| S. RODNEY: 24:21 | You want the rhetoric to be influenced by that kind of honesty, that kind of, “We sat down. I had it wrong. It wasn’t an easy conversation. We went back and forth, and I realized this. And having realized this, I need to therefore change the way that I do whatever I do subsequently.” And Travis– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 24:45 | No, absolutely. That ethic of care. |
| S. RODNEY: 24:46 | Right. Right. But– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 24:48 | Yeah. That ethic of care. |
| S. RODNEY: 24:49 | But Travis’s point, and I think it’s a subtle point you’ve been making, and I think that came to the surface more with your discussion of foreign policy or how you want someone to act as a sort of agent of foreign policy, is that you expect our political leaders not to do that. You expect them to do the thing that is expedient. You expect them to do the thing that plays well in Peoria. I think that the thing about Joe Biden that we all can agree on is that he will be that kind of realpolitik politician. He will do the thing that plays in Peoria. He does not really care about restorative justice. Or more to the point, even if he did care about restorative justice, he would not make the rhetorical moves that would publicly represent him as caring about that because he wants a candidacy that is essentially palatable. He wants beige. He’s going to run a beige campaign. He’s not going to offend anybody in particular. He’s not going to go out of his way to [crosstalk]– |
| C.T. WEBB: 26:03 | In this context, beige is better than orange, though, in this context. |
| S. RODNEY: 26:08 | Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough [laughter]. But that’s the clarity that I think I’ve come to in this conversation. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:15 | With that beigeness, is that why he’s in the double digits? |
| C.T. WEBB: 26:19 | I think so. |
| S. RODNEY: 26:19 | I think so. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:19 | Oh, that is so disappointing. |
| S. RODNEY: 26:20 | I think so. Oh, no. No. I mean, let’s be clear. Right? I mean, I hate saying it this way because it just sounds so dismissive. But we do live in a culture that is, at its core– or maybe not at its core, but throughout its body. Right? One of the viral infections it carries throughout the body politic is misogyny and racism. That’s part of us. Right? |
| C.T. WEBB: 26:52 | Yeah. I mean, certainly, that’s true. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:52 | Yeah. Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 26:53 | Right. Go ahead. No, go. |
| C.T. WEBB: 26:55 | No, no. I was just going say– I was just going to say I think that there’s a slightly more generous reading of the body politic in relation to Biden, which is that, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we elected Trump [laughter].” Biden is very closely connected to the Obama presidency. And I think that he reflects– I think it’s like, “Okay. We fucked up. Sorry about that.” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 27:20 | The optics, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 27:21 | Yeah. That’s [crosstalk]. |
| C.T. WEBB: 27:22 | Honestly, I feel like there is some contrition. I really do. I feel like it’s like, “Okay. All right. Sorry. It was one night. I didn’t mean to hook up with him [laughter].” I really kind of feel like there’s a little bit of that going on. |
| S. RODNEY: 27:39 | I think that’s a good read. I think that’s an insightful read. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 27:41 | That is a good read. |
| S. RODNEY: 27:42 | “Beige, I’m sorry [laughter].” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 27:48 | “Beige, it’s not really that color [crosstalk].” |
| S. RODNEY: 27:49 | “I look presidential.” That’s the candidacy. Right? |
| C.T. WEBB: 27:54 | Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 27:55 | “I look presidential, yeah, which I have to explore a little bit more often– I mean, a little more thoroughly for myself.” |
| S. RODNEY: 28:00 | I think it’s a slightly misogynous term, actually. I’m using it somewhat sarcastically, but I do think that– I mean, when we say that someone is presidential, are we not just saying they are a tall white male, seriously? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 28:18 | [Yeah, maybe?]. |
| C.T. WEBB: 28:19 | Let’s pick this up. Let’s pick this up next time. What does it mean to look presidential for the 2020 field? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 28:24 | Awesome. |
| C.T. WEBB: 28:26 | And I know Seph has an appointment, so we’re going to wrap it up a little short today. So Seph and Steven, thanks very much for the conversation. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 28:33 | Thank you very much. It was a good one. |
| S. RODNEY: 28:34 | Indeed. Thank you for having us. [music] |
References
**No References for Podcast 0072**