Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
He's also clearly wrong in suggesting that this is just about voting against Trump and Biden doesn't deserve any credit. The votes Biden will get are, in large part, votes expressly for Biden. Biden is an avatar of normalcy and stability and nothing about him seems crazy or extreme, He's more or less completely unoffensive, unless you're on the extreme wing of one party or another. The worst thing that Trump could come up with as a moniker for him was "Sleepy Joe". His big scandal to lob in Biden's direction is that his son is corrupt. Trump and company have repeatedly attempted to characterize him as someone beholden to the far left, which hasn't worked. And all Biden has had to say was, "Come on. You know me." Yeah, they absolutely do.
And you can debate whether he's honest, or if you need to grade on a "politician" curve to get there, but he comes across as direct and believable in a way that many other politicians, including most of the people in the democratic primaries not named Sanders or Yang, did not. Those people came across as rehearsed, fake politicians. This guy is who he seems to be. Hell, he doesn't even seem like he's capable of putting on a fake politician face - I mean, just look at the gaffes he makes. For better or worse, there's no polish on him.
And current events have hidden his weaknesses as a candidate at the same time as they've played into his strengths. In light of COVID, the fact that he's not maintaining a normal presidential campaign schedule doesn't make him look old and frail to the extent it would have in other years. COVID also makes him an inspired choice in that he doesn't have to shout over a disaster to introduce himself to the nation or explain what he stands for. He can say, "I'll fight for your health care, I did it before", and whether or not you like the way he and Obama dealt with health care policy or support the ACA, at least you have good reason to believe him.
And crucially, unlike last time when you had a candidate in Clinton who everyone viewed as shady and corrupt lecturing and preaching at the country about how Trump was a really bad person you guys, just deplorable, this time you have this guy.
I mean, whatever you think about him, he actually is the guy in those videos. He doesn't need to preach overmuch about being decent to people, because he actually comes across like a good, decent person. Lindsey Graham was actually honest for once in his life when he called him the nicest person in politics:
You can wish he was more progressive policy wise, or you can be concerned about him catering to the identitarian wing of the policy, or a thousand other things depending on your personal political ideology and the issues that matter to you. But he's turned out to be absolutely the right nominee for the Democrats in this cycle among the people who were on offer, and he's run his campaign more or less perfectly.
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