When the twenty candidates stood on the Democratic debate stage, many of us preferred a half-dozen or so over Joe Biden, for various reasons. Moreover, at the time, we believed that any one of those Democrats would eviscerate Donald Trump – and this was before COVID – because Trump was just so Trump. But politics is a weird thing and it turns out that Joe Biden might have been the only person standing on that stage that could beat Trump, and Biden’s victory might owe itself to Trump’s horrific handling of COVID more than anything.

Little did we know that Biden would step into the job as the modern-day FDR, afraid of nothing, ready to drastically change the way the nation works. “Middle of the road Joe” took a hard-left turn the moment his hand came off the Bible. He turned so hard, so fast, that one might think that the GOP regulars would already despise the man and what he’s doing to the country.

Rawstory covers a deeper dive in The Independent but this story doesn’t really require a deep dive. The entire premise is that Republicans love demonizing their opponent, it’s their thing. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama (especially Barack Obama), the GOP playbook depends entirely upon convincing their voters that these were monsters.

But it isn’t working with Joe.

Part of it is because Joe didn’t become Joe without learning a few things, like the fact that he’s gaffe-prone. Thus the White House has limited his public comments and speaking, preferring to script most communications and let their actions do the talking. The actions have been both popular and done with uber-competence, which is refreshing.

And then there’s this. Joe Biden is everyone’s favorite Grandpa, the nice one, the one that isn’t bitter or petulant. He is the grandfather that is getting out more and more, laughing with people, rather than retreating into bitter seclusion. It is hard to hate that guy. The quoted “Republican Operative” says that it’s been  “a nightmare” trying to gin up anger against Biden. Strange, that’s one of the sweetest dreams we Democrats have had in a while.

This quote says it all:

“You’ll never get anyone to admit this on the record, but it’s really f*cking hard to drive down the negatives of an affable, gentlemanly white man who says nice, positive things most of the time.”

The only disturbing part of that statement is that we suspect “white” is the most operative word in the quote. At a time when MAGAs and Tucker are talking about “the Great Replacement” theory (Democrats are inviting immigrants of color in the door to take power forever), having that grandfatherly “white man” at the top probably assuages some of those GOP-voter nightmares. Things are as they should be, in their minds.

Perhaps the GOP is looking forward to a future with women and POC taking power. It would be easier to “drive up the negatives.” But maybe Democrats have a counter to that already. Biden and the Democrats happen to believe in government and happen to believe that the government can do a good job. Perhaps people will get used to the government doing a good job and not want to go back to the days of Trump-Cruz-Hawley type of rule, where the entire goal is to rip the government apart.

Either way, it couldn’t happen to a better crowd. Sweet dreams, kids.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak