Old Joe, Just Living in the Past?

Joe Biden speaks at the PD&R Event, April 7, 2015. Photo courtesy of USHUD.

The Democratic debate last night in Miami wasn’t great for Joe Biden. Ed Kilgore explains how Biden was subject to many attacks on his vulnerabilities. Perhaps the most poignant was from Sen. Kamala Harris (watch the video below). Kilgore writes in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer (abridged):

One bad debate performance is by no means a game-changer for a candidate like Joe Biden.

But it’s not so much how poorly he did in the first round of debates as how he did poorly that should alarm his camp.

He brought three basic vulnerabilities into this phase of the 2020 campaign: (1) his age and the associated impression that he’s not up to job and perhaps is just living in the past; (2) his possible complacency as the early front-runner; and (3) his heavy dependence on African-American voters for his current lead, and his clear vulnerability on his record on racially sensitive issues.

All of these vulnerabilities were exposed in the Miami debate.

His rivals along with Biden critics in the activist community and the news media may now smell blood in the water.