What I learned watching Bernie and Biden for hours on end [View all]

Politico

Biden is a creature of the Senate. Sanders is a creature of the campaign trail. Seeing them back to back in these two settings clarifies the choice.

By RYAN LIZZA

01/30/2020 05:12 AM EST

snip...

Though he’s adjusted the pitch somewhat to respond to critics, the heart of Biden’s speech still includes a paean to the old Senate where relationships matter more than anything else and what’s most important is to never, as he puts it, question a colleague’s motives, only their judgment. Biden even quoted columnist David Brooks about restoring America’s “moral fabric.” On Wednesday, he added a specific criticism about the dangers of attacking a fellow legislator as being, for example, “in the pocket of” an industry. Once you get personal, he insisted, the deals can’t get done.

This is the flip side of Sanders’ flaw. Sanders eschews relationships and deal-making to a fault, while Biden fetishizes them to a fault. Sanders, according to Hillary Clinton’s recent harsh assessment, is someone that “nobody likes” and “nobody wants to work with” in the Senate, but in Iowa he has raucous crowds and actual rock stars campaigning for him. Biden is a beloved figure among Democrats in the Senate and has trouble rousing an audience in Iowa.

In the midst of an impeachment trial that is about a plot to define Biden as personally corrupt — in the pocket of big Ukraine! — Biden’s argument about relationships sounded hollow. He seems to recognize this. In Council Bluffs, Biden quickly pivoted to a perhaps more effective pitch about how the Republican Party was trying to destroy him because it believes he could beat Trump.

“They’re trying to smear me to stop me,” he said. This time the crowd applauded.