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Is Joe Biden 'woke' enough to woo the left?

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

The booing arose after he was asked what he would do about "white supremacists" and he responded with nostalgic recollections of his marching with various civil rights leaders. "Come on," a woman shouted from the back, according to news accounts, and the booing began.

Biden was smart, then, to center his 3 1/2-minute announcement video around images of torch-carrying white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., where a woman protesting the racists was killed. Biden then quoted Trump's view, twice, that there were "some very fine people on both sides," playing the anti-Trump card for all its worth -- and it's worth a lot to the otherwise largely divided Dems.

But Biden's centrism has advantages. In different versions, it brought victories to Presidents Obama and Clinton. Each focused less on ideology than on the bread-and-butter kitchen-table issues that Democrats are trying to promote now, as they are trying to show they are committed to more issues than simply opposing Trump.

A recent report by the Hidden Tribes of America project, which aimed to measure and reduce political polarization, is being touted by moderates as showing Democratic voters to be more centrist than the flood of tweets and sound bites by activists suggests.

In short, the October report finds the outspoken tribe of "Twitter Democrats," Democratic-leaning voters on social media, is outnumbered, roughly 2-to-1, by the more moderate, diverse and less-educated group of Democrats who usually do not post a lot of political content online.

 

Biden may seem out of touch to activists but well in touch with the party's mainstream voters. He's also capable of change. He has moved toward the left gradually over the years, sometimes coming out as more progressive than Obama on such issues as same-sex marriage.

As someone who has covered him on various occasions since the 1980s, I think Biden's biggest strength is his image of authenticity. Even when it leads to gaffes, as he said in the 2012 campaign, "I always tell the truth." We'll see about that. Voters will forgive a lot, if they think a candidate is sincere and willing to correct mistakes. We've had enough phoniness in politics already.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)


(c) 2019 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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