The Biden Factor

How viable is Joe Biden. True enough, he looks the part. He looks presidential. He has a long record of public service and was President Obama's loyal lapdog for eight years.

By Niall Ferguson’s reckoning, Biden still rankles from the fact that Obama chose Hillary as his designated successor in 2016. By the rules of counterfactuals, Biden has been encumbered by “what ifs.” He assumes, not unreasonably, that he could have beaten Donald Trump n 2016. If only Obama had not made a deal with the Clinton devils Joe Biden would be president today.

Thus, his candidacy is a "what if" candidacy. The problem is, has his time passed? Is it simply too late. Has his ship already sailed? And will he run a campaign that would have been more suitable in 2016, against a candidate who now has a record to run on?

So, Biden’s peculiar announcement video emphasizes that he is the candidate who can beat Donald Trump. Ferguson explains:

He has opted to position himself, from the outset, as the candidate who can beat Trump. The opening salvo of Biden 2020 was a three-minutes-plus video revolving round events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-fascist protesters culminated in the murder of Heather Heyer.

According to Biden, Trump’s statement at that time — that there were “some very fine people on both sides” — had “assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

Now Biden was born in 1942, so we’re being asked to believe that Trump is a bigger threat to the United States of America than either the Axis powers in the Second World War or the Soviet Union in the Cold War. But the implausibility of that claim is not the reason Biden will struggle to be the Democratic candidate next year.

That’s a nice of way of saying that Biden was indulging a piece of rhetorical hyperbole. The Democratic resistance has been wallowing in such hyperbole since November 9, 2016, so it feels a bit stale. As does Joe Biden, for that matter.

Ferguson does not think that creepy Joe is going to be harmed by his behaviors toward women. I respectfully disagree. True enough, many commentators, even of a conservative persuasion, have rushed to defend the hair sniffer. Apparently, they do not understand the power of pheromones and have no familiarity with other hair-based fetishes… as in panty sniffing. As a rule, women find such practices disgusting, a violation of their privacy. In truth, most men would agree.

So, I consider it a vulnerability, one that Biden’s opponents will surely exploit.

Ferguson’s analysis has it that the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left to nominate a Joe Biden. Perhaps that is true. On the other hand, the same party is so completely consumed with rage about Donald Trump that they would probably nominate a wet racoon if they thought he could beat Trump.

As for Biden’s other vulnerabilities, aside from  his being white and male, I recently discovered a salient article regarding Biden’s multiple experiences with cosmetic surgery. Vanity of vanities, do you think that America is ready to elect a president who is so vain that he has had, as they say in my neighborhood, work done.

Emily Larson reports in The Washington Examiner:

Cosmetic doctors are certain that former Vice President Joe Biden’s full head of hair, smooth forehead, and Cheshire Cat grin are the result of plastic surgery and other procedures.

Around the time of the 2008 campaign, alterations in Biden’s appearance became noticeable. His hairline changed, wrinkles disappeared, his smile was brighter. “Without any question Joe Biden had hair transplants,” Dr. Barry Cohen, a plastic surgeon with offices in the Washington suburbs, told the Washington Examiner.

“In fact, he had bad plugs years ago,” Cohen said. “Subsequently, he filled in his frontal hairline to camouflage the bad ‘Barbie dollesque’ plugs. I suspect he has regular Botox and probably filler. If he had a face lift, he needs another.”

As it happened, John Kerry also had some work done. You don't think that he was born that way, do you? How did his candidacy work out?

The general opinion now is that cosmetic surgery for men is not disqualifying. And yet, in the hands of the right opponent, it might become a defect. For a manly man like Joe Biden, Botox does not quite fit the image.