Patriarchy is a hell of a drug

To return to a theme Paul has been hitting this theme for a while now, Lili Loofbourow has a good piece contemplating how a diverse field of talented, forward-thinking candidates produced…Joe Biden as the most likely nominee:

Back when the Democratic primary still had more candidates than a shot of the debate stage could comfortably hold—including Julián Castro, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee, Eric Swalwell, Kirsten Gillibrand, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Michael Bennet, and even Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard—I remember thinking that whatever else might happen, this much at least was true: The Democratic Party had a deep bench of competent contenders. That seemed like good news, and so did this: The agendas most of these folks offered were considerably to the left of any I’d heard before. That, for someone on the left, was a stunning (and heartening) departure. So was the diversity: six women! Half a dozen candidates from minority groups! A handful of young candidates to choose from in a government that has been widely criticized as a gerontocracy! It was reassuring to see this wide a swath of Democrats agree on the problems the country faces, and downright inspiring, at times, to see how broad a consensus there was for bold action to solve them. The coalition many of these candidates were aiming to convince was young and alarmed, constrained by debt and health care costs and bigotry and desperate to do something about climate change.

It is jaw-dropping that not one but two leftist candidates made it to this point in the primaries. But maybe we assimilate progress too quickly, because having marveled at the diversity of that slate of candidates, I find it no less jaw-dropping that a primary process with that initial makeup is likely to yield Joe Biden as the person most likely to be the Democratic nominee.

Biden isn’t just a literal return to a Democratic status quo; he is, at this point in his life, its oldest and least competent version. Many are speculating—as if it would console or ameliorate the fact that the worst person for the job inexplicably got it—that Biden might appoint a competent woman of color for his vice president. It’s also true that this fight isn’t over; Sanders might claw back some support if his campaign manages to learn any lessons at all from the Super Tuesday results. But if it doesn’t, Biden is it: the least agile thinker, the least fluent talker to appear on that stage will run against an even more incompetent incumbent. If he wins, Biden will break the record for oldest man to be sworn in as president of the United States. (Donald Trump holds that title now.) If he loses to a president who has literally been impeached, it will be easy to see why: He’s in decline.

In addition to the obvious, I think her theory of “the politics of exhaustion” rings true:

Biden might coast to victory on a wave of voters who can’t take Trump anymore and find the former vice president to be the closest thing to a “generic Democrat” on offer. No one can really say what Biden is for, but his Democratic credentials are clear, and that plus name recognition has obvious appeal for a subset of voters—even without a ground game, or much fundraising, or many interviews, or a memorably staked-out position on anything at all, Biden has floated through these primaries with peculiar ease. I wrote, back in January, before his prospects briefly dipped, that Biden’s success might be explained as a kind of “politics of exhaustion”: There is a part of the American electorate that’s just tired, and tired of being tired. The unrelenting political news cycles of the past few years have burned them out and depressed them and angered them, and all they want is to tune out and put someone even notionally acceptable in charge.

I think one reason many people — myself most very definitely included — who pay careful attention to politics underrated Biden’s chances is that to less tuned-in people an America where it’s a lot easier not to be thinking about politics all the time is very attractive. Whether this will work in the general…who knows, but most likely that’s what we’ll have to hope.