By Ryan Marrufo
As somebody who does not really pay attention to what happens in the political world. I found it fairly strange to see Joe Biden come back in the 2020 Democratic Primary. I only find it strange myself because the last time I had heard of Joe Biden was when he was Obama’s Vice President, and having my only source for the primaries being social media, it was interesting to see the rise of Joe Biden. I find looking towards social media for news on the election to be one of the better ways to gather up public opinion, as I do not really trust those surveys that are taken. From what I remember reading, people who did not support Biden and had represented Sanders, they bring up most of Biden’s shortcomings as a politician and how his entire election is based off of the fact that he was Obama’s Vice President. I also see the people who support Biden and what they have to say about the people who support Bernie Sanders. Using Bernie’s shortcomings as a politician as well, along with grouping his cause to be apart of some “communist agenda”. I find Joe Biden’s rise up the Democratic Party to be very fascinating, and its mainly due to who were the front runners (or the people I heard about the most going into the 2020 primaries) were. That being Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang, and with two of them out of the race due to dropping their campaigns I thought that Sanders would have a easy nomination in the Democratic party. In an opinion piece, by Michelle Cottle she writes about the up and coming of Joe Biden within the context of the 2020 election, as well as some of his shortcomings in his campaign. From reading this and other articles about this, I think I can safely say that Joe Biden’s spike in popularity comes from him being the main candidate that is seen as moderate. Where Mr. Sanders is seen as more of a radical, and has had his campaign revolving around the idea of it being a socialist movement be called a communist one and made out to be a campaign that is meant to be hurting people in the long run. There are a couple of things that Cottle brings up that can bee seen as a hindrance to his campaign overall. With one of the main themes between some of these points that he does not know how to answer certain questions properly. That theme goes for two of her points, which was whenever Biden is asked questions about the Burisma Investigations in which he was apart of and was accused of corruptive behavior when dealing with Ukraine. Whenever asked questions about it, to quote it from Cottle’s article “He looked not only unsteady but cornered.”, it looks to be as if though he has not figured out how to counter these kind of hard hitting questions about himself. Cottle also briefly mentions how he is the same when discussing his family. I can also draw the conclusion that he can not counter argue very well, just from watching the debate between Sanders and Biden. Biden retaliations were always countered by Sanders and instead of arguing back, Biden would instead try to change the subject to something different such as when he accused Sanders of having nine super PACs but was quickly thrown of when Sanders asked him to name them. After that Biden tried to change the subject by dismissing Sanders asking to name his super PACs. These next two, I believe go hand in hand, and that is the fact that Biden is a loose cannon and has a tendency to go off topic. To briefly touch the off topic nature of Biden, it can also be seen as a positive for his campaign due to it making him sound more like he is more of an authentic speaker as oppose to one that is more condenscending sounding. To also touch on the topic of him being a loose cannon, there was a issue that had happened recently where Biden was in Detroit, and had told an autoworker that he was “full of shit” when talking about Biden supposedly wanting to put an end to the second amendment. Within the same exchange there was also threats from Biden to fight the man and as well talking about the guns that he owns and mistakenly calling the AR-15 rifle the AR-14, amidst the yelling. I think that it is safe to say that without the other two candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang, dropping out, the moderate Democrat flocked to the Biden Movement. That is also most likely due to people not wanting to associate themselves with a campaign that is centered around socialism (and from what I can guess from peoples opinions online), have been told to believe is an evil thing to have in a government.
Cottle, Michelle. “The Resurrection of Joe Biden.” The New York Times. The New York Times, March 7, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opinion/joe-biden-2020-primary.html?searchResultPosition=1.
“Joe Biden Threatens Detroit Autoworker, Calls Him ‘Full of Sh**” in Argument over Guns.” Democracy Now! Independent Global News, March 11, 2020. https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/11/headlines/joe_biden_threatens_detroit_autoworker_calls_him_full_of_sh_in_argument_over_guns.
History Lab 
Ryan, I wonder what makes you not trust opinion polls? I tend to be much more suspicious of social media and its mysterious algorithms that are programmed to feed me the content that I’m most likely to “thumbs-up.” I know some polls can be funded by partisan initiatives, and have leading questions that may skew the results, but I think on the whole, most pollsters are trying to provide a genuine statistical analysis of a given election. Many of the organizations creating these polls are universities, objective news organizations, and other non-profit organizations who are trying to take as accurate a snapshot of public opinion as possible. The most reputable of the pollsters make sure to get a large enough sample size and take careful measures to account for variables. I think just like everything else in this digital age, we have to shoulder the burden ourselves of checking where we are getting our news from and making sure that it is in fact a reliable source. As history majors we all know how important it is to get credible sources in our writing, we have to use that same skill in evaluating the content we see in our everyday lives.
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Hi Ryan, it’s interesting to hear a perspective of the election from someone who claims to not follow politics very closely. I agree with Travis that as long as you find trustworthy polls such as Gallup, you should feel safe in trusting believing the information you see there. Also, I’m not sure I would agree with how you describe Joe Biden’s sudden rise to the forefront. If anything, he started the campaign as the leader but started to dwindle when other, better moderate candidates such as Buttigieg began to gain more traction. I wouldn’t agree either than Yang really was ever a real contender, considering he hadn’t won a single delegate by the time he dropped. I do agree that Biden’s sudden resurgence in appeal has to do with the fact that he is a moderate candidate as opposed to Sanders who is far more extreme in his views. People tend to lean moderate in elections for many reasons but in this current one, mostly because it seems that a moderate candidate would have the best chance of beating Trump in the general election.
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Hi Ryan, great post! I can relate to your position as I don’t follow politics all that closely, and get most of my updates on the election process from social media. I agree with your point that most people have turned to Biden as a candidate, as he is moderate, whereas Bernie is more radical. I found it a bit surprising though, that Biden has so many supporters despite his blunders during debates, during his argument with the Detroit Autoworker, and more recently, the allegations of sexual harassment aimed at him. Do you think that Biden will become the Democratic candidate despite these things?
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This was a super interesting read that Biden may be a worse person to run for President than Burnie, and could make people see that if you just look at Biden he is just as much a politician as any of them. I agree with looking at polls is hard since the demographic changes all the time and didn’t help anyone out with the last election. Biden having problems to answer questions is frightening but also isn’t as much of an issue as Hilary Clinton. Biden did a decent job as Obama’s Vice President and with him not talking about something in the past with the Ukraine deal just shows he might be more qualified. The biggest problem is that it does work for Biden and him having all these scandals show that a loose canon may break the pack of people around for not wanting to be apart of a socialist party. The biggest thing that could happen might be that he becomes president because he has some of the same tendencies to rattle off like Trump or could be his downfall.
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After reading your post its hard not to go back to previous election cycles and observe patterns of party insiders choosing the Democratic nominee instead of having the electorate choose the candidate. One election was the presidential election of 2004. One candidate that was considered the outsider (anti-establishment) candidate was Howard Dean. John Kerry was also a candidate in that year’s primary and was the preferred candidate of the establishment. Dean had many progressive ideas which were believed to be dangerous and because of that he could not possibly be able to win against George W. Bush in the general election. Ultimately, what ended Dean’s campaign was the infamous “Dean Scream” which can be easily accessed on YouTube.
The parallels are obvious in 2020. Bernie Sanders’ campaign ultimately ended after the entire Democratic establishment rallied behind Joe Biden after Bernie’s loss in South Carolina. Essentially the coalescing behind Biden was Bernie’s “Dean Scream” moment. In 2004 the Democratic nominee was John Kerry and subsequently lost to Bush. Sixteen years later a similar dynamic is playing out. Bernie love or hate his policies, had enormous support amongst the people, but that did not matter because the establishment already chose Biden to go against Trump in the general. Question is, whether the outcome in ’04 would be similar in ’20.
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