No joe

Okay, one more thing and I’ll shut up about Biden (for a while). but I saw a lot of people defending Joe Biden around social media today, and not one actually gave a reason why his policy history or how he handled the Anita Hall hearings shouldn’t be held against him except “But…but…UNITY!!11!! AND TRUMP!!!” Like, geesh, I don’t want to break from my usual record of self-depreciation but at least. if you press me, I can tell you what I don’t like about Bernie (his waffling on gun control and his not coming out against the foreign policy orthodoxy as strongly I would like) and Warren (her not being as much of an extreme reformer as I would prefer) and explain briefly why I support them anyway (we desperately need New Deal Democrats in power to break the stranglehold Third Way politics has on the Democratic Party at least on a discursive level). If a sizable number of people who consider themselves politically savvy really are stuck on this personality-centered “He’s my guy and the tribe likes him and he says he can beat the enemy so I like him too and if you don’t like him for any reason you’re bad” level of understanding politics, then we really are doomed.