I'm so glad a New York Times blogger came out and said what I have been thinking, and in reference to a candidate I really like.
Today's piece on Joe Biden points out the disparity between Biden's viability as a Democratic presidential candidate and his low poll numbers. Why don't more people support him? I have been saying recently that much of what I hear from my peers -- mostly college students -- is how jaded they are with politics, how all the front-runners are phonies playing the political game, and how it just makes them want to stay home on election day. Well, I ask, if they are so dissatisfied with the front-runners, then why not look at the other candidates, many of whom are often honest and experienced, like Biden? But they only respond with more jadedness: Oh, he's never going to win. Well yes, if everyone like you has that attitude, which Matt Bai does a better job of describing:
Ten years of endless blather about the game of politics on cable TV have trained the most engaged American voters to handicap candidates rather than hear them, to pontificate about who might win rather than deciding whom they actually want to win. Voters seem to approach politics increasingly as pundits, and they look to poll numbers to tell them who’s electable and who isn’t, never stopping to realize that they are the ones who get to decide.
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As someone who likes Biden, I enjoyed reading most of the comments below the blog, many of which offer heartwarming and genuine support for him. But as someone who also doesn't like Bush and is wondering why Biden isn't doing better, I especially enjoyed this one:
Only a serious nation takes serious candidates seriously. Any nation that could elect someone so obviously mediocre in intellectual ability and then reelect him, after nearly four years of even more obvious failings and outright deceptions, can no longer be considered a serious nation.
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