What more is needed to show that Barr lied?
[Barr puts Trump’s actions in best light, despite ‘substantial evidence’ of obstruction cited by Mueller]
Annie Donaldson’s notes show Trump’s claims of no obstruction to be false, but will that make a difference to his supporters? Probably not, which is not unexpected from folks who still believe that Earth was made in six days and other fantasies and superstitions.
Any of the Democratic candidates should be able to beat The Liar in Chief if voters turn out in force behind one candidate who sticks to the truth, no matter age or sex.
6
Mr.Cohen is on track but not 100%. I don't think many voters thought about Davos while casting their votes. Clinton's actions and statements certainly played a part. A fabricated story about a landing under fire in Bosnia. Her Benghazi explanation, knowing it wasn't true. 30,000 missing emails that turned out to be 300,000. The hundreds of thousands of dollars she got for he speeches while calling those who disagreed with the big banks and Wall Street, unwashed masses. But most of all she ran, as Obama called it, a soulless campaign. Biden won't be so soulless but he comes with the same attitude she did, entitlement. Whenever he talks to people, it is always about "I" or "me". He feels he is entitled to rub noses, hug, kiss a woman's hair, snuggle and just like Clinton, feels he is entitled to president. And, his slogan will be the same as Clinton’s, “Now it's my turn." Trump must be praying Biden is the one, because Trump will tell his crowds, "I told you I would make it your turn. Don't let the same old group take it away from you."
16
I'm afraid Roger Cohen's basic reasonableness has kept him from seeing the lesson of 2016. People wanted to reject the tired oligarchy, so they elected an elderly oligarch. The lesson is that nothing makes sense anymore, we are through the looking glass. Instead of trying to figure it out, we might as well just look at the numbers and make our way forward, ignoring all the ghosts and goblins that pop out of the closets. People seem to like Biden, so what the heck, let's elect Biden.
13
Which Democrat can win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio? Not Elizabeth Warren. Maybe Joe Biden. The candidate who wins these states wins the election.
10
When Angela Davis, in her recent suport of an embattled black, immigrant, Islamic congresswoman. referenced Walter Rodney's writings, she drew attention to the continuing immolation within the USA. Rodneys How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is replaced by Trumps How the USA Underdevelops America. Undereducation, poor healthcare, underpaid jobs in poor conditions, vicious laws and mercilless enforcement along with continuing unnecessary wars are key components. That those with the least are continued as sacrifice for those with the most is quite similar to the feelings which brought Fidel and Che out of the Sierras into Havana in 1958. Cubans freeing Cuba...with help. The chickens are coming home.
3
We don't need any corporate Democrats. They are a big part of the reason for our present state. We need to wean ourselves off big business and their disproportionate influence.
12
At the core of my antipathy to either Biden and Sanders is one simple observation: having a sane, articulate, skilled and YOUNG person in the ring against Trump will alone be worth about 40 percent of the electorate. Trump's brain is sclerotic, he makes little sense most of the time, he bullies people and lies without effort and he scares the heck out of many voters. To choose another old man to run against him is to miss an opportunity, a big opportunity.
But Biden is particularly worrisome for the reasons outlined in this story: as Senate Foreign Affairs chair, he was the Senator from Globalism and he is extremely vulnerable for that reason Remember that Hilary's vulnerability wasn't just due to her political tone deafness, hectoring speaking patterns and generally unpleasant manner, it was also due to the fact that NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton, who also repealed Glass Steagall and then proceeded to reap tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees, a whole bunch of it from financial services companies. It looked corrupt and probably was corrupt. What little secrets are we going to discover about Ol' Joe? He is too much of a risk and he, at his core, is an apparatchik, exactly the wrong guy at the wrong time.
11
Our world has become slave to billionaires who - after accumulating their billions by whatever means necessary ( Soros, Trump, Dalio, the Davos crowd ) now know what is best for us. If we can put the hatred for Trump aside - one reason I believe he was elected is that there were enough people fed up with the global elite to overlook his shortcomings. While we should not turn totally towards ourselves - the elite has demonstrated that their only concern is their own "vision", which has left a good part of the US in the dust. Part of the vision for the future has to include both a better sharing of the prosperity that a few have enjoyed but also - how do we truly enable our country - urban, coastal, rural, rust belt, coal country - to adapt and pursue their own prosperity. People still want meaningful jobs - we have to encourage that for our Country
7
Roger is right about Biden's unsuitability to lead the nation and the world forward to economic justice and sustainability.
But he gives Trump too much credit. Trump in no way brilliantly perceived and exploited the resentments of his base. He just shares their bigotry, anti-intellectualism, crass materialism, paranoia, ignorance and simplistic responses to complex problems. He and his base are of one mind and it's not a capacious, curious and well educated one.
17
Trump is the poster child of the Davos oligarchs, movers and shakers, who hoodwinked the American voter by his false pretenses to understand them and support them. It may take them a decade to realize his scam, and so they will support this gigolo until they feel it in their pocketbook, whether through lack of jobs or lousy health care. The American voter is not astute- the 2016 elections proved it. The very, even extreme, progressive proposals and the implied immediacy of their implementation by the likes of Sanders and Warren, not to mention their costs, will be easily exposed to adverse criticism and disinformation by the well oiled Republican propaganda machine and their wealthy backers, that may still allow their election, but most likely will retain the present Congressional split among the parties resulting in legislative deadlock. At best the Democrats may get a slight majority in the Senate, but that chamber will remain hostile to the progressives' agenda. A Warren or Sanders win will not have the coattail effect of swinging red states Senators to the democrats. A moderate candidate, particularly Biden has the potential of actually achieving a solid, but not filibuster-proof, democratic majority in the Senate. Biden's proven relationship with the Republicans will help with some legislative compromises. A Warren or Sanders victory would instead increase the rival paralysis until at least 2022, and with little legislative successes, may render a worse result.
3
And yet, Hillary did win in 2016 by 3 million votes. Still, the Democrats indeed have an uphill battle for 2020. They should be listening better to the women and minorities who turned out in 2016 and stop focusing only on the fickle white male working class voters. This caution applies to the media as well.
6
The Demo-publicans, of which Joe is a card-carrying member, have ruled this country from WWII on. Rich people got richer, poor people got poorer. Minimum wages stayed at ridiculously low levels. Unions were gutted. First the working class, then the middle class were hollowed out and left to fend for themselves. Didn't matter who was in power, no one who caused the collapse of 2008 actually went to jail. The two parties came close to bankrupting the country in the Forever War. The Republicans are the enemy of the working poor and the Democrats, who wring their hands are bemoan our fate, have done no better.
Time for real change and this guy ain't it. And if it takes four more years of our made-in-Russia President to bring that home for Amercians, so be it.
8
Joe is an absolute political genius compared to his critics.
Take their criticism with a grain of salt.
5
"Such listening is critical. Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton."
That isn't an accurate picture. Trump listened to what Sanders was saying, and repeated it verbatim. Rigged this and that. Revolution. Trade and tariff nonsense. Trump was not truly emphasizing any of that before Sanders said it first.
Trump listened to how his own rallies roared when he lied, demonized brown people, incited violence, played up irrational fears. Please let's not forget what the pertinent studies tell us. The strongest motivator for Trump's voters, who were on average well off, was racial resentment.
Clinton's polices as described on her web site would have done tons of good for working class and middle class Americans. Roger seems to be claiming the opposite here.
5
A few weeks ago, your colleague Michelle Goldberg opined Joe Biden shouldn’t bother running for president and now you dub him an elite member of the ‘Davos Party.’ I’m glad you and Goldberg have come out so strongly against Joe Biden’s candidacy because when Joe wins the Democratic nomination, so-called progressives won’t be to lay the blame for their candidate’s defeat on all the negative coverage in the NYTimes.
On a recent trip from to New York to Virginia, I saw how beloved Joe Biden is among the military, working and middle class families I met. They were unimpressed by Liz Warren and didn’t think much of Bernie Sanders — but, they are ready to vote for Joe Biden. Listen to the people Roger.
You have successfully ignited the passions of ‘innovative’ revolutionaries in the Democratic party. When the time comes, I will vote Blue no matter who it is. Despite all your rhetoric, will you and the others you’ve mobilized do the same? I hope so or we’ll be stuck with the cancer in the oval office for another four years.
7
Dear @nichol H,
I’m a Democrat too, but that ticket - Bernie & Elizabeth Warren - is WAY too left.
If you think taxes are bad now, they’ll leave us with NOTHING after taxes. That’s not hyperbole.
We’ll become the Socialist Republic of the United States. That’s not hyperbole either.
2
This should be a two way race between Warren and Sanders. Anything else would be plus ca change plus ca la meme chose.
I took Biden as saying that look, China’s just not the invincible boogeyman some like to think.
It’s much like Obama’s noting—correctly—that Russia isn’t our No. 1 problem. Sorry, but what’s shameful there is that we’re getting snookered by a third-rate state.
And what’s shameful about our relations with China is that our President, and our budget, owe China a ton of cash. Mad about China’s taking our manufacturing jobs? Nifty...you willing to stop shopping at Walmart and Dollar General, and pay that extra grand for your next car and computer and phone and washer/dryer? About about that jet-ski?
Didn’t think so.
So while Cohen’s got a serious point about Davos, don’t just go yelling at Joe Biden. Look in the mirror and yell. Oh, by the way?
China’s workers are also people.
5
On the 834th day of this nightmare I thought we had realized that the Trump voter is less worried about economic issues than we first thought. Rather they are "pro-gun, anti-abortion", anti- immigrant, climate change denying and anti-civil rights (for anyone who is not a human white male). They congregate around Rupert Murdoch's empire and soak up the right wing talk radio programs. They engage in hateful conspiracy theories and exchange in juvenile name calling. The majority of these miscreants are not struggling with money. They simply do not want to be regulated and they do not want to pay taxes, They do not care one rat's behind about anyone else. This is a large population of intellectually and morally challenged people. Donald Trump is not an aberration and Joe Bidden is not what we need now. What we need is a large voter turnout. The DCCC had better pay attention.
6
If FDR was running for the presidency today, he'd be ripped to shreds by the right, left, and middle. He would be denounced by many in the working class, including the water-poisoned, COPD-afflicted wage slaves of the Appalachian coal and steel CEO's and owners who are murdering their serfs while at the same time urging them to vote for Trump and the GOP. FDR would be denounced as a communist or a socialist by both the wealthy and the fascist nut-jobs (which he actually was when he ran in 1932 and through the 1940's). The under educated wouldn't trust FDR because of his social class and because it takes a certain amount of logic to sort out truth from lies.
Many in the middle class would rip into FDR because of their belief in the prosperity gospel, particularly the less educated among them. Also, many Americans of modest means hate the idea of progressive taxation. They believe that even though, today they couldn't scrape together $500 in an emergency, their ship is going to come in at any moment, and they'll be billionaires too. They don't want their future billions to be taxed away.
These Trump-victims don't realize that many of them are alive today because FDR used the U.S. government to save their grandparents during the Great Depression and WWII. FDR set the stage for the 50's and '60's "American Dream".
FDR Made America Great. Trump can't and doesn't want to MAGA. Pathological narcissists don't make anything great. They only line their own pockets.
9
....except...Cohen bases his view of Trump on his rally talking points not his actions. He disguised himself as a working class hero that would drain the swamp. He filled it with a new set of cronies, many out to destruct the missions of the agencies. He is a bloviating puppet to the Kochs and their cohorts furthering the low tax, regulation cutting agenda that fights against rising seas and inequality. It does behoove Biden to move away from Wall St.
3
I like Joe Biden but he is a political dinosaur much like Hillary Clinton. People all over the world who are not part of the upper economic ten percent of elites are very very angry and that anger has finally boiled over. If Biden is the last man standing I will vote for him but my money is on Berne, Pete or Kamala.
7
Point taken Mr. Cohen, and I generally agree. But I can't help but find it ironic that many of Trump's rank and file supporters are now subject to the same deregulatory practices on Wall Street that benefited "elites" and resulted in the 2008 meltdown which severely affected the former. The whole notion of Trump being the defender of the "little guy" is bogus when you consider that the ultimate beneficiaries of his deregulation agenda--be it environmental, economic, or whatever--is the very "ancien regime" itself, which includes Biden in your argument.
6
Biden is not Davos. I've been there, Yes, we are all some Davos, except Trump. That is why Biden will combine
Davos with Pittsburgh and Cedar Rapids and win. Trump is the number one issue and the one that will unify a vast number of voters. Nick
5
To give Trump credit for thinking anything through is a gross misjudgment. It is certainly true that his supporters were reacting to the "Party of Davos" -- i.e. the enormously burdensome and increasingly antidemocratic inequality of assets and income -- but the reaction was chaotic and instinctual, as opposed to some clever manipulation. Trump stumbled into office, and has been stumbling ever since. What has been most entertaining about his administration is the attempts by the media to take him seriiously.
7
I sometimes wonder at the proclivity of commentators to make vast apocalyptic generalizations from specific events. Example: In the NY primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received 15,897 votes to Joe Crowley's 11,761 - that was the total vote! Safe district so election to Congress could be read also as having no significance! Example: Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million! Indicative of a rightist tsunami - perhaps not! Has Cohen noted the composition of the new Congress?
Cohen references the Spanish election - one read is that is the beginning of a resurgence for social democracy in Europe. Yes, the repugnant Vox got 10% but it was an immense loss. The Local Elections in the UK saw major losses for UKip and like-minded. The rightists, the racists that control Poland, Hungary are under serious challenge. Climate denial - essential to the Bannion/Trump notion of the world - is under near global assault, not least in the USA. The elections for the European Parliament might be more informative as to whether Europe is heading the way of reaction but again participation is usually so low hard to draw conclusions. Yet, no reason for complacency and even reason for mobilization for:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
4
Irrespective of your viewpoint on President Trump, you have to give his organization credit for one of the most masterful campaigns ever devised in American politics. Heavily overspent by the opposition, his campaign changed the "political dialogue". And any attempt to assume politics will revert to the old paradigm is hugely mistaken. All sectors of our society are now mobilized and ready for political combat. Truly, that is what it has become, a form of aggressive confrontation. A fight for the direction of the nation in the 21st Century. The old identified "silent majority' is no longer silent. And that group is no longer Democrat. More to the point, the Democratic Party is hindered by its reactionary left from taking any move to the middle. Most would opine that a "political blowout" is very likely in 2020.
4
@R
In a democracy, elections are always a "form of aggressive confrontation".
So that's not what the GOP changed. What the GOP did is creating a massive fake news propaganda machine, so that no matter how much they betray their own voters in DC (and they do so on a daily basis), the GOP base will vote for them anyhow.
As to the majority in this country: Democrats just won the mid-term elections with the biggest voter gap in three decades, remember? And that's after Hillary already won 3 million more votes than Trump - notwithstanding massive pro-Trump Russia meddling, as the Mueller report has proven, and the Comey attack.
In the meanwhile, poll after poll shows that a clear majority in this country supports the Democrats' agenda - and on many major issues, even a majority of GOP voters does.
Finally, as always the difference between the policies proposed by for instance Biden and Bernie will be VERY small.
Conclusion: time to start doing some fact-checking, imho ... ;-)
5
As many have said already: Biden is Hillary 2.0
The days of getting away with the "lesser of two evils" are over. The internet has changed the game in ways that can not be quantified precisely.
7
Cohen has lost me with this opinion piece. Party of Davos? Democrats neglecting or ignoring the worker class? There is no reason for Democrats to listen to the left-behinds but there are many reasons for the left-behinds to listen to the Republican Party.
The Republican agenda focuses on tax relief for the wealthy and corporations and dismantling the ACA.
All social programs and progressive legislation that protects workers, the poor and the invisible were engineered and advanced by Democrats.
However the US remains a stubborn outlier when it comes to benefits of a social democracy.
3
I'm from Delaware and we knew Joe as "the Senator from MBNA."
He let the credit card companies write legislation that he pushed in Congress to make it much harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and/or receive debt adjustment/forgiveness.
He is part of the problem!
18
The Dems need to pay more attention to the working class.
Instead they are advocating policies that would reduce income inequality, make Medicare available to all Americans and make college education more affordable.
What working class person is interested in any of these?
2
@Mike Edwards
Those working class individuals that voted against their best interests and voted for Trump.
6
Democrats are great at losing elections because of the content of this article. It's intelligent, thoughtful, idealistic, and perhaps absolutely right. But that doesn't win elections.
Republicans eschew all of the qualities above and treat elections like a back alley fight for their life, and that is why they win.
I'm not saying Democrats should abandon their ideals, just tailor their campaigns more pragmatically and save the (mostly financially) controversial projects (ie. Green New Deal, Free College, Reparations) for AFTER they have actually won.
15
@Matt D
You nailed it Matt.
2
america voted for the outsider last election for a reason and now the democratic party leaders are telling us to vote for the middle. if we do that we will lose and we will have four more years of our current president.
Both Bernie and Elizabeth qualify as outsiders and are far better prepared to offer a stressed american middle class options that will make their lives better. we need to convince Trump voters that he hasn't helped them but either of these two democrats can.
this election will be primarily about health care and fixing Obama care doesn't qualify as a policy statement.
8
@frank
So your crystal ball says it’s going to be a Sanders / Warren ticket. Who’s going to win the Kentucky Derby? I still have time to call my bookie.
Totally agree with you, Mr. Cohen! Just because folks think he can pick up a few votes in the Mid-West that were lost last time - they've inflated Biden's value. That is backward thinking and trying to win the last election, not the one coming up.
Lots has changed in the past few years, and it's obvious that the energy, focus and desires of most of us on the left are inspired by more progressive ideas.
Having a candidate that appeals to the folks that didn't vote lat all like the millions of young voters, people of color and the disenfranchised has the potential for a much bigger pay off. Biden is NOT the person that can do that.
In my view, I am very impressed with Harris's combination of grit, intellect. and experience - along with her relative youth and racial blend - all would make her a formidable candidate.
It's time to get over our residual fear of the last election, and to understand the current mood of so many on the left that are really looking for change. We need to elect a candidate with wide appeal to our base, which is much bigger than theirs. If the left turns out big, we win.
Quit worrying about those few old white men in the Mid-West, and Republicans who want us to elect a Republican light.
5
@Margo Wendorf
Maybe Harris is the ideal candidate for people that don’t vote. Actually a good many of those people voted for Gary Johnson because of his hallmark position on pot legalization. That his other positions were about as right wing as you can get didn’t seem to faze all those “progressives” in the least.
1
At the moment most people much prefer Biden to the competition,
probably for the very well thought out reason that the center is the place to gain national political power.
And Biden has proven to be one of the most gifted politicians in American history.
perhaps one of the most gifted we have to choose from.
3
I would buy into this analysis, except that it credits Trump too much. Trump isn't capable of the sort of calculation and vision that Cohen ascribes to him in this article: He's a man governed by instinct and most of all a weening and preening self-interest. If not for the slimmest of margins in a few key states -- we'd have had Hillary, and Joe will do well in those very same places.
11
Biden is the perfect mouthpiece politician: he's smart enough to regurgitate coherently the elitist catechism but not intelligent (or curious) enough to be able to see through it. The Biden role is inevitable. Someone needs to hoist the banner of nostalgia and denial for one last glorious lap around the track. Who better than an affable old warhorse who can still remember growing up in Scranton? It seems like only yesterday...The sweet thing about Biden is that despite an army of vigilant handlers he will eventually find a way jam his foot in his mouth.
A minor addition to the perceptive observations about the rise of Trump. The populist revolt was against the conspiracy of financial elites as represented by Davos but not against wealth as such. One secret to the Trump sauce is the fact that he plainly was not a child of Wall Street. As a glitzy and somewhat disreputable regional real estate magnate, Trump was enough of an outsider to be immune from accusations of complicity with the global financial cabal. An important element of Trumpism is a subterranean fratricidal war for leverage within the ranks of the upper bourgeoisie.
11
While Cohen's analysis of developments in the West is, as usual, perceptive, he misses the mark on two important points in dismissing Biden.
First is the electoral math of the 2020 election. If the goal is to defeat Trump, then Biden is, at the moment, the only candidate likely to bring Obama/Trump voters in the few electorally relevant states back to voting for a Democrat. Aspirational candidates are all fine and good, but there is no indication any of them can accomplish this. All they can do is give Trump the victory, something he cannot accomplish on his own.
Second, Cohen also seems to ignore an important difference between the U.S. and Europe. While both have sunk into identity politics, such means different things there and here. For Europe, identity is very much tied up with a thousand years of national ethnic cohesion. Here we are, since our founding just two hundred years ago, a self-consciously multi-ethnic society, obvious hierarchies notwithstanding. In fact, it is largely that we have always had ethnic battles of one sort or another that makes us different. Such is part of our socio-political DNA.
Thus, in Europe identity as a political force largely comes from the Right, while over here it comes from the Left. This difference is what makes Cohen's view regarding Biden's chance of winning far too simplistic, if not simply wrong.
It is possible, though, a candidate will appear "out of nowhere", much as Bill Clinton did, and successfully challenge Trump.
5
Common sense people want to beat Trump and return the office of the President to normalcy. So yes he's the conservative choice. That's the point.
7
America need to look forward, not backwards.
America's future is in front of us, not in the back.
Let's show the world that Trump was only a bump on the road.
Let's elect Mayor Pete.
4
today's is one of your best essays ever, Mr. Cohen! exactly right, if terrifying.
11
For Democrats, the main thing is to win the White House in 2010. Losing with the “best” candidate is still losing.
And if Democrats do defeat Trump, the difference between Biden and Sanders won’t matter unless Democrats also win both houses of congress.
So the key question is which of our 23 candidates is most electable, not which fits Cohen’s grand anti-Davos, political vision.
We could start by asking Nancy Pelosi.
6
Well to me the Trump phenomenon is all smoke and mirrors. An entitled elite from New York city (!) who cares about the worker in rural Ohio? A guy who flies around in a large private jet who lives large and inherited millions from his father? This is the definition of an elitist! He barely won because of narrow victories in just a few states..aided by James Comey and the Russian propaganda ads and misinformation aimed at those states. He lost most of the blue states. So who says all the resentful people voted for Trump? And..what if we find out that he laundered Russian oligarch money illegally? What if his tax returns show he has all sorts of shady write offs? What is he pays no income tax? What if the democrats keep reminding people about the fraud involving Trump university? I trust the wisdom of the independent american voter. The only way Trump wins is if the democrats run a candidate too far to the left to win Michigan/Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Biden can win and this is the most important thing. Right the ship..then make gradual changes.
4
"My impression is that, among Democratic contenders, Elizabeth Warren is listening most closely. Her proposed tax on the super wealthy reflects that — while billionaires, like China, get a pass from Biden."
Absolutely! Biden is ancient history and we need change in 2020.
8
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for sharing vitally important insights.
A related facet of the shortsightedness of virtually all prominent Democrats is their continuing refusal to look at and confront their implicit biases. Not the usual biases about which they (properly) inveigh and prattle: rather, implicit biases against people who lack fancy credentials (“education”); people who are not members of favored “minorities” but who also struggle in daily life; people who are skeptical of favored political ideologies; and others whose lives may llie outside their (our) ken.
Elementary humaneness requires that such people also be considered and respected. Moreover, they vote.
5
The problem with Trump and Trumpism is that it can’t govern. Biden’s message seems to put a premium on governing. If you can’t govern you can’t solve problems.
Whether Biden goes to Davos or not, he doesn’t come across as being captured of it (China comment notwithstanding).
3
Trump will NOT be easy to beat. Not by a long shot. The conservative media and Trump's handlers will crow to the high heavens, "roaring stock market! Record low unemployment!" No matter that the blue-collar masses haven't necessarily benefited from those numbers. Biden, however admirable, is old world, old news. He offers nothing (so far) that can trump Trump's propaganda. If Democrats run with Uncle Joe, many voters will probably stay home. Astonishing to me that so many older voters still think that middle-of-the-road, same-old-same-old, makes for a winning ticket. It doesn't. It won't.
11
Much as I am attracted to Sunny Joe, and bemoan the loyalty of Obama to Hilary Clinton, thereby dooming us to Donald Trump, the reality is that to date, only Kamala Harris has displayed the combination of sensitivity, intelligence, experience, toughness, focus, and competence that can bring our country back to its ideals while holding accountable those responsible for our plunge into chaos and disarray.
Hilary, in her recent to-the point WaPo Op-ed, exhibited the qualities which she highlighted prior to her years as First Lady, and later during her tenure as Secretary of State. Her late hard-hitting interview with Rachel Maddow further amplified her qualities as a strong leader, at least until she reverted to the poor-Hilary caricature of her 2016 self-created email-server fiasco. But like Biden, she may be past her prime. Not so, Kamala Harris.
2
It is the end of an era, there is little doubt of that. These eras used to last for a hundred years,but now with the population boom and climate change resulting, and destruction of earths resources, and competition for them increasing, fear and panic is setting in. Grab what you can get while you can still get it is the game now. the naked greed and rampant rape of the planet is still very much with us. All this talk from Democrats about controlling the destruction and greed is making the ruling corporate elite nervous.
Trump has been captured by the corporate elite, whether he knows it or not. It is very possible that Trump too is at the end of an era. These things are moving fast now. It is hard to keep up and it will only get more complicated.
2
I don't know why Biden made that statement about China. Maybe to build up confidence. But Biden is best positioned to rebuild the international alliance of democracies. TPP was not a bad deal.
4
@Roy
We don't know what the TPP was.
It was written in private by Corp., Lobbyist and politicians.
Very little to nothing was about workers of environment to best of our knowledge.
Being "not a bad deal", doesn't make it a "good deal!"
Biden is a bought and sold politician.
We don't need more of those.
4
I am glad to see that this article has encouraged people to critically think about the next Democratic candidate beyond simply finding any warm body who can beat Trump.
HRC and her groupies successfully chose her Republican opponent in 2016, only to see their efforts utterly backfire by failing to win. With 20 primary candidates and counting, maybe America will have a competitive general election.
7
The biggest takeaway from this column is that Biden has no real policy other than I am the one to beat Trump, that won't cut it in the primaries, it won't cut it in the general. Elizabeth Warren's rise in the polls has everything to do with her policies that address the real day to day concerns of the electorate. Oh, and she was the first to call for Individual 1's impeachment proving she can walk and chew gum at the same time
9
A brilliant piece Mr. Cohen — that changed my thinking, for one. I now am starting to come around to the analysis that if the rational America that still exists out there grabs for the “reasonable” “unobjectionable” alternative just to best Trump — and somehow wins in 2020 with this play, then the ultimate revolution could be lost soon thereafter. When you think of it, if Dems had forsaken fear of Ronny and the courage to embrace the hard turn to Teddy in 80 over the “safer” bet Jimmy, maybe the Reagan Revolution would never have stolen the “rational right” from the rational Eisenhower/Rockefeller brigades, and the middle may have stayed in the Kennedy camp into the 2000s... and who knows how history might have changed if THAT had happened. Either way, Mr. Cohen is right to point out attention right now away from the frightening clown on stage and instead toward the less visible, broader social developments that are feeding him and the radical fringe undergirding his survival. It may just be the country we thought we would welcome our grandchildren into that’s at stake.
3
You overthink the problem and ignore the nature of the electorate. If everyone in a voting booth in the critical states was a reader of the "Gray Lady", Mr. Bezos' product in D.C., the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Politico, and the "Economist" and other quality sources you'd have a case.
But our electorate votes on emotion, gut, feelings, intuition. Terrible I know, but there it is.
Sen. Warren is not my first choice as I'm a centrist moderate, and I also know the Senate is a prize that must be won to do anything big. I think she'd have an uphill climb. Sexism hasn't gone away and it is practiced by women against their own too. She has learned to smile more ( OK the need to do so is unfair for females) and be warmer. She is a Democrat and if necessary a team player, which certainly can't be said of that other person from New England (by way of Brooklyn) who is neither. So she is much preferable to him.
But you leave out our other candidates not named Biden. No one is perfect but none frighten the swing voters and independent voters essential to win both the Presidency and the Senate.
2
Biden would be a good VP choice again, but that is not in the cards. Nonetheless, the way to bridge the progressive/moderate gulf in the Democratic party is by pairing the right two candidates and elevating the VP role into something approximating a partnership.
Warren/Hickenlooper
Sanders/Inslee
Harris/Bennet
Pick your own combination, as their are many iterations.
6
@Barking Doggerel My hoped for combination at this point is Bernie Sanders and Katie Porter. Porter is the smart and feisty Congresswoman from California that held Jamie Dimon accountable for the low wages he pays many of his employees. Sanders/Porter for America.
You write "Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton." Really? Then why did Clinton received three million more votes than Trump? Trump is a minority president because he won by minute percentages in three states. In all those states the evidence is that Biden could beat Trump. I'm all for pundits feeling the pulse of the Zeitgeist, but shouldn't they also pay some attention to the facts?
13
@PeterE
Here's attention to the facts: 3 million voters above Trump translates to about a 3% difference; any decent candidate would have done much, much better than 3% better than Trump.
As it turned out, 40 million of her own party did not vote at all.
8
While I prefer Elizabeth Warren over Biden why not both? Mr. Cohen, and anyone else, if you think Warren can attract working class and middle class voters who defected in 2016 then maybe these two are a winning team -- both of them claim allegiance to the working class and one of them appeals to die-hard centrists. Biden also seems to appeal to moderate never-Trump Republicans, who will not vote if a more radical Democrat wins the primaries. To beat Trump those people need to go to the polls too.
6
"Biden .... a faithful servant of the Party of Davos that secured impunity for the financiers behind the 2008 meltdown, a heady growth in inequality, China appeasement and the arrogance of money-wooed Democrats estranged from their working-class constituency."
A spot on analysis, in my opinion. But when was the last time a Democratic candidate was not estranged from their working class constituency? McGovern?
7
Excellent article. I hope Joe Biden read it and listened. I think he does relate to those who live on the edge of financial disaster and see few routes forward to a better life. He did go to union workers early, and they seemed, by and large, to welcome him.
On the other hand, he stayed out of the race so long and, as I understand it, courted big donors to finance his campaign while he was sitting it out. He did go to Davos, was part of the administration that kept the crooks on Wall Street out of jail, stayed silent about the role of big money in politics and effects of income inequality.
Can Joe change? Is it time for Elizabeth or Bernie? If they win, will Democrats lose the House? Is there a moderate model that could significantly reduce income inequality and give individuals priority over big business?
1
There have been 24 "retread" candidates in our history (defined as a candidate who has either lost in the general or come in a close second place in the primaries). Only 4 have been successful.
Warren/Harris!
Harris/Booker!
3
He's right about Warren and Sanders of course - especially Warren.
And it will take some innovation in approach to get the voters to grasp that policy matters more than Pocahontas.
7
While Cohen's analysis of developments in the West is, as usual, perceptive, he misses the mark on two important points in dismissing Biden.
First is the electoral math of the 2020 election. If the goal is to defeat Trump, then Biden is, at the moment, the only candidate likely to bring Obama/Trump voters in the few electorally relevant states back to voting for a Democrat. Aspirational candidates are all fine and good, but there is no indication any of them can accomplish this. All they can do is give Trump the victory, something he cannot accomplish on his own.
Second, Cohen also seems to ignore an important difference between the U.S. and Europe. While both have sunk into identity politics, such means different things there and here. For Europe, identity is very much tied up with a thousand years of national ethnic cohesion. Here we are, since our founding just two hundred years ago, a self-consciously multi-ethnic society, obvious hierarchies notwithstanding. In fact, it is largely that we have always had ethnic battles of one sort or another that makes us different. Such is part of our socio-political DNA.
Thus, in Europe identity as a political force largely comes from the Right, while over here it comes from the Left. This difference is what makes Cohen's view regarding Biden's chance of winning far too simplistic, if not simply wrong.
It is possible, though, a candidate will appear "out of nowhere", much as Bill Clinton did, and successfully challenge Trump.
8
I am thinking that someone like Bernie Sanders is the only real hope that the American people realistically have.
As Roger notes, apart from the very rich, the working class American (and I really want to stress the term working class, because the middle class is in decline right now), has been facing very real declining standards of living.
All of this has been done for one purpose. To make the 1% and especially the 0.1% even richer.
The existing Democratic Establishment, as represented by Biden, Obama, and both Clintons is captured by the 0.1%, relying heavily on their patronage and after holding office, their money for the purposes of personal enrichment. The Goldman Sachs speeches that of Hilary Clinton Presidential Campaign were a very prominent example. Clinton refused to reveal the contents of the speeches for fear of the backlash. This was a clear indication of "side" that Clinton and similar politicians were on.
I think that the brutal reality, as a few other comments have noted, is that many Democrats would rather lose to Trump than win with someone like Sanders or Warren. Winning fundamentally alters the relationship the Democrats, have with the 0.1% elite, something the Establishment Democrats don't want.
Trump, for all of his flaws, has cynically exploited the working class anxiety. That's a big part of the reason why he won in 2016. The existing establishment in other words is facing a legitimacy crisis, having failed the American people in their greed.
11
I don't think most Democrats who favor Biden at this point are against Bernie or any of the Democrats. They just want to be sure that Trump is defeated. If we had to pick a candidate today, Biden looks like the winner. He appears to have broad appeal. None of the rest of the candidates are inspiring people across the spectrum right now. There are so many candidates it is hard to get to know them. We need debates so we can start to see these folks. It is early days yet. Maybe a truly inspirational leader will emerge and support will form behind her/him. If I had to choose today, I would go with Biden simply because of the numbers. We need swing states, moderates and black women and we need people to get out and vote. I supported Bernie last time and then held my nose and voted for Clinton. I like several of the current candidates but I don't know them yet. I need more time. I am 68 and I live in Connecticut, where we elect Democrats. I will vote in 2020 and I will vote a straight Democratic ticket no matter who is on it.
4
I welcomed Biden's entry into the election fray seeing it as a shot in the arm. I felt as if we finally have someone who can beat Trump. But if Biden keeps reciting from the texts that gave rise to the election of Trump, he may not be of much help in 2020. On the contrary, he would only deepen our sense of depression and make us feel even more helpless than we do now. At present, at least we cherish hope, howsoever slightly, that we can redress our politics.
I'm as opposed to the Trump administration as anyone on the left, yet I would not support a Dem candidate who promised to bring us back Clinton-Obama static, hold-the- status quo programs, and policies. The world moves forward not to prolong the present, much less recall and relive the past. It wants to learn from the past and present and build and improve upon it, while noticeably willing to shed and discard all that has not worked well.
Yes, on that yardstick, Senator Elizabeth Warren is the only candidate among the present Democratic line-up that wants to shake the status quo and move the country in a new direction that it seems ready and willing to go. Unfortunately, our misogynist society has not paid her the kind of attention it needs to. Perhaps she could also do something about it by surrounding herself with a group of forward-looking, known agents of change, as Congresswomen Alessandra Cortez, Katie Porter, and someone who is very strong on national security, like John Brennen or General Hayden.
7
Was Trump savvy enough to understand what the public wanted and promise to give it to them, as Roger Cohen states, or did his already in place vulgarity, ignorance, and cruelty line up with who his supporters already were? The difference is significant in trying to understand today’s America.
As a New Yorker and thus exposed to Trump for more years than the average American, he sounds no different than he has through the decades. He’s been protected since he was young by a variety of Roy Cohns, who have allowed him not to pay his bills, cheating workers, partners and the government, blaming everyone but himself when things didn’t go his way. He has always been greedy and cruel but allowed to have his way, and this didn’t stop when he began campaigning for the presidency.
15
Trump's drumbeat on immigration struck a chord with many non-republicans including myself. The dems better wake up and work with the R's on comprehensive immigration control.
5
@Bobcb
In the televised meeting last year with Democrats, Trump claimed he's sign any deal and would take the heat. Dems offered 25 billion for the wall and border security in exchange for DACA. Steve Miller was aghast and whispered in his ear. Trump melted under the heat of the right's pressure. And by the way, when they end family unification, will Melanie's family be repatriated to their home country?
1
knowing immigration is such a winning issue for them, Republicans have no political motivation to do anything except make matters worse. they have had a chance to work up a bipartisan bill and threw away the opportunity because t did not serve their political purpose. in a nutshell, this is what's wrong with Republicans: they are too cunning by half about politics and at the same time, and for many of the same reasons, they are terrible at governing.
Dumping the current socio-political confusion at Davos' feet is very fair. The fact is, the so called 'forgotten people' are only so described because they are consistently manipulated to vote against their own self interest by the same callous rich who repere to Davos for a transparent form of phony absolution. Now, some are concerned, because Russian oligarchs are adopting that approach too. The Russians have observed that Democracy is for sale. Big money rules the day everywhere in western democracies, by manipulating the narrow fears of voting people and exploiting a commodity that they retain in great abundance, hope. Those meetings in Davos are meant to be self congratulatory. It is their twisted version of Mecca, where they symbolically exorcise themselves of what they wrought on their day jobs. Davos is today's response to anti-trust, a place where they can collude to repress the common people, under the guise of doing good works. Those scoundrels who pay lobbyists to manipulate spineless, amenable politicians, are now implausibly 'shocked' that they have it all, and ninety-eight percent of the populace does not. It is paradoxical, that the same audacious, ever present commodity of hope that fuels the common people, and the rich so nonchalantly exploit, also elected Obama twice, rejected Mrs Clinton twice and then spawned Trump. Therein lies the predominant reason why Biden will not stimulate the same voter excitement that the newer generation of candidates will.
3
@Quilp Many of the "forgotten People" do vote their interest: their hatreds....
It is a mistake refer to the movement or actions of Trump or his rabid fans and Republican lackeys as a "Revolution". The election of 2016 was a complete fraud. It was the result of massive systematic voter suppression organized by the GOP for years in advance. This voter suppression was joined with a forceful electoral intervention by a Russian digital army carrying out Putin's orders for his boy Trump. Trump has made it clear that he is owned and controlled by Putin.
The right wing extremists that rule the Republican Party have used the age old con game promising voters a return to a past life that is long over and gone. They offer no solutions, only regressive nationalist rallying cries like Make America Great Again. This is not a "revolution", it is a return to the same strategy used by fascists the world over for the past the past century.
14
There are certainly Republican politicians, especially the ones who have been in congress awhile, that are more comfortable in the moderate cloak. And Biden views them as the real Republican party who are willing to compromise and strike deals. BUT, the power in the party resides in their rabid base, who are further right than those moderates . . further right than even Trump. They choose to live in a bubble of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter, the same way radicalized Muslims choose to reject moderate clerics and listen to ISIS clerics. And these rabid Republicans are the party that the lefty Democrats see.
As long as the Republican base is as politically involved, and rabid as they are, the moderates that Biden feels a kinship to will never compromise and risk being primary'd. The 8 years of Obama's frustrated attempts at deals and compromise showed us that.
Trump is not the real opponent. He is just the ugly outgrowth of the Republican base. Defeating Trump does not defeat the movement, just as taking out an ISIS leader does not result in the collapse of radical Islam. The real problem is much deeper. And we Democrats need our leaders to see that.
4
You had me.
Until you touted Elizabeth Warren.
3
Roger Cohen, you are telling the people that the best chance to get rid of the cancer in the White House isn’t good enough to find the overall cure, so don’t use it. Please re-think and reconsider.
3
"Such listening is critical. Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton"
Nah -Trump just behaved like the trog he is and was amazed when he realized how a huge percentage of americans are just like him without the money.
Greedy -ignorant and living in a never ending reality show.
AND liars! AND disassemblers writ large!
15
Scary piece, but right on.
2
When Joe Biden wins, we can go back to partying in Davos, getting Nobel prizes for shipping jobs overseas and backing globalism. It's going to be great again for the Clinton and Obama hangers-on, who can finally quit their TV gigs and get patronage jobs or contracts with the new Administration. We can make the White House Correspondents' Dinner great again, with Hollywood celebrities and back slapping humor. Reporters can catch a break and go back to re-printing press releases from the White House Press Office. Democrats will be able to put the squeeze on business and get people back on the welfare rolls. Biden can get back to sending money to Iran, and maybe even get his Administration's version of ISIS up and running. It's going to be great!
7
Please, people, stop already. The daily “reasons not to vote for the only guy with a prayer of defeating Trump” columns are getting older and more tiresome by the minute. I’m sick to death of this administration. Things will only get worse before we have a chance for them to get better. You are a big part of the circular firing squad. Im heartsick to pick up the daily news and see more of the same. When will we learn?
6
If Biden gets the nod--not likely, but possible--then the Democratic party will have blown a real opportunity to reform itself and get real about the factors that led to defeat in 2016. (Yah, I know all about the "popular vote.")
We seem to be headed for that kind of train wreck as the presidential campaigns plod on. Bernie's minions will not go quietly into the night of defeat. They will sulk and stay home. Ditto other top-shelf candidates.
By the time the first primaries occur, the American public will have long become terminally bored by the 20 or so wanna-be candidates--it's already becoming apparent. With almost every candidate duplicating one another in the voter-bribery department, there will be ample opportunity for an outlier to squeeze through, as Trump did.
If the gods of history give the Democrats a sharp, deep financial recession next summer--something every Democrat secretly prays for--then there might, just might, be a real contest. If the stock-tickers keep rolling, all bets are off.
2
Well done.
1
Looks like Biden will be the first domino to fall. He has 3 fatal Democrat flaws. He is white, he is male, and he is old. Sorry, he also has a fourth - he is the current front runner. After Biden is squashed, Bernie will be next. Good luck defeating Trump. Better hope Democrats win the Senate back because you'll need it.
4
To me, Biden is the representative, old school Democrat, and let me emphasize old, because he...like Feinstein, Leahy, and many other Democrats in the senate are too old, set in their ways, and intoxicated by power to rise to the level of passion needed to defeat Trump and his online Brown Shirts.
7
Best op-ed on Biden so far. The author just fails to mention that Biden would be a darling of Jerusalem as well. Could we ever have a president in the US who dares to challenge the Israel lobby? I forgot, we had one. He was assassinated in 1963.
7
I really believe the days of fiddling around on the margins are over. Trump talks big and delivers the government to the corporations. He pulled and is pulling the MAGA hats over their eyes. Its time to realize the people want to go bold. Warren and Sanders embody this. Biden like Clinton is more of the same, zombies fiddling around on the edges. I believe that if Biden is nominated Trump will win again because people like me want real change, not the Obama kind of change which was incremental and safe. We want fundamental change that Sanders and Warren advocate. And I really believe with a Biden nomination we will get another unimaginative campaign which will not get the Democratic base excited and they'll sit on their hands and Trump will squeak by again.
7
Race. Russians. Rights.
Elites and grifters.
Climate change.
2
Great writing and author really hits his stride.Compare Biden's complete and utter lack of credibility to that of the late playwright Lillian Hellman about whom Mary McCarthy said that every word Hellman wrote, even "an" and "the" was a lie. Re Macron who promises to be more humane, do you mean that he admits to being inhumane in the past?"Believe that Macron, "n'est pas fait pour rester dans la politique!"Politics is not his "violon d'Ingres."Perhaps he would be more at home teaming up with Brigitte Bardot , also a champion of 4 legged creatures and together they could become "la conscience nationale de la France,finding homes for abandoned animals!Trump calls Biden "Sleepy Joe Biden" to which I would add another sobriquet: "Monsieur Tiroir Caisse"or Senator Cash Register since any deal that goes down in Washington, Biden seems to get a piece of, even the stimulus package.Part of the "Ancien Regime:"That's a certainty.Bravo to author for his fine writing!
7
the democrats never abandoned the poor and middle class working people. The republicans destroyed the labor movement in most of the u.s. with right to work laws and appeals to racism, religion, patriotism and other cynical ploys. Clinton, Biden, etc. have always stood for policies that help middle american voters. The problem in our body politic is that stupidity prevails
3
Obama said ISIS is the JV team, and Biden said China's not competition for us. That's why Trump won in 2016 and will win again in 2020.
1
Oh please spare us the 'Trump listened better than HRC' cliche-disguised-as-thought — in what world have you observed Trump listening to anyone except himself and his sycophants?!
11
Biden is a walking disaster..
3
Warren-Harris 2020
1
Don’t count Biden out, but beat Trump and his treasonous claque at all costs.
2
Too many of our “thinkers” and “wise people” completely missed and still don’t understand the white hot hate that many Americans have towards our self proclaimed “betters.”
6
Soundbites:
A week in DC confirmed my hypothesis and another Roger Cohen op-ed that lays bare our current reality.
Leonard Cohen's lyrics " I fought against the bottle but had to do it drunk" become axiomatic.
I watched Robert Costa interview Mark "the leader of the Feudal Caucus" Meadows contradicting himself between each and every breathe speaking a strange English dialect.
I knew there was no United states only a cacophony of ignorance filling the air.
I was born in 1948 the year that gave title to Orwell's 1984, Orwell was the man who tried to stop Newspeak and gave us Newspeak as the language of our day.
I visited Politics and Prose.
I listened closely to the words spoken by those "White Nationalists" keen on interrupting Metzel's talk.
I read a book while in Washington written by Canadian historian, philosopher John Ralston Saul called The Comeback.
I love Washington its people and its energy but it is insane. I grew up and grew old with a body that cannot keep up with my brain.
Time magazine calls John Ralston Saul a prophet, the Comeback written in 2015 may read like an historical narrative but it sure sounds a solution to our madness.
I cannot use a cell phone but I understand how technology functions. I live in a world of seasons, I could never wear a watch. I made five people smile at Dulles. Washington is wonderful it looks like both sides of the political debate.
Chrystia Freeland spoke at Davos this year decrying populism. There may be hope.
3
I applaud Roger Cohen for defining the problem that we face. I fear, however, that the rich oligarchy that controls about $160 trillion currently under "asset management" will continue to jack up the economy until it explodes, damning us all to an economic "depression winter" unlike anything the modern world has ever seen.
We have to change and regulate cannibalistic and predatory American Capitalism in order to save it. But those in control will not let that happen. They are similar to drug addicts.
4
Roger's right. Damnit!
2
Neither fully agree or disagree, and thats rare for me when Mr Cohen writes.
Some issues are correct and that rhetoric... China isn’t bad for us... will go away. China is bend upon ruling the world by 2050 economically- if it doesn’t already- all you have to do is watch their new Silk Road being build, the rise of their military, and their control in the ground in Africa.
And as regards Biden... I will be honest, a big number of people in this country, simply want Mr Trump gone, come hell or high water!
Now who has the strongest voice and agenda, may all the force be with them.
First get this man off his throne and do some introspective healing of all branches of the government and get rid of political goons like McConnell.
Trump would have been nothing if GOP had remained stand strong. I remember all the speeches Lindsey Graham or Paul Ryan made about ‘we won’t tolerate such a man...” and long before, all standing behind him clapping him on.
Anyone who tackles DT would have to tackle GOP as well and If Biden doesn’t wake up to it, I don’t think he’ll be getting the vote.
1
Roger,
The people who voted for Trump, the New Dark Age Minds, want something for nothing. They want to have their cake and eat it as well.
The tax code could be changed and they still would not be happy.
The basic problem is that we have a screwed up version of Capitalism both in America and around the world.
If we cleaned up that screwed up Capitalism it would require a big change in how people lived their lives.
The Trump supporters really think they can go back in time.
The planet has a fixed carrying capacity to absorb the Capitalist Systems Externalities, like the fact that nobody pays to dump their Co2 into the atmosphere.
One answer is that technology may find a way to stop things like the Co2 issues while people can maintain their life style, but that will add a lot of costs to everything and people will not like that.
Another answer is that we remove a lot of people from the planet so that they rest can keep the c.1960 life style and work that life style within the earths carrying capacity to absorb the Capitalist Externalities. But who is going to propose mass death or mas restrictions on having children.
At the end of the day it does not matter who runs. The people around the world want what they want without understanding what is really going on.
It is going to take a new non-economic elite to force the world to go where it does not want to. Starting no doubt with a second great US civil war as it will not happy by changing minds only force.
Mr. Cohen gives Trump far too much credit for everything that has happened. Bannon is probably the person whose ideas were thrust on Trump during one of his frenzies. I am still looking for the real authors of the crazy ideas coming from his administration. I know the writers thinkers are wealthy with little regard for the rest of us out here. Their aim is making money over all else and they will sell anything including the good ole USofA as evidenced by the last election. Right now the American people want sanity in government and stability. The future be damned. It is like the 70's craziness with Watergate, helicopters falling off Embassies, recession, etc. We want a peaceful country that works again. We do not want a raving maniac for a President but a return to diplomacy, PEACE, and a steady hand at the helm. We will vote for who can offer that. You really overrate China's capacity for organization. They are still a Communist country.
1
@Betsy Herring "I am still looking for the real authors of the crazy ideas coming from his administration."
Two words: Stephen. Miller.
Roger I see you've learned nothing. Your sneers at president Obama and Hillary helped put trump in office. Now your sneering at Biden will serve to reelect trump. So the question is: are you a mole or a bourbon ( you know, forget nothing and learn nothing)?
2
The 2008 meltdown was a result of The GOP allowing unregulated banking, not "Davos". If I have to choose between the "Men of Davos" and the idiots of Murdoch, I'll take the Davos team any day.
3
that is a sad commentary
It was so Joe Biden to have a fundraiser with Republican donors and corporate lobbyists the day of his campaign launch.
But, then, he is known as the corporate bag man.
Biden was stupid enough to vote for the Iraq War, NAFTA,
deregulating Wall Street...
What is the Establishment thinking, trying to shove him down our throats, like they did with Hillary?
President Bernie Sanders 2020!
7
I'm so glad to finally see columnists from the NYT finally starting to understand the great disconnect between most Americans and the people who have supposedly led them for decades. You're right Roger, Trump isn't an aberration - and abomination certainly - but the groundswell that he tapped into wasn't a fluke, and it isn't going away.
People can't be fooled forever, and they've woken up to the fact that there is an oligarchy (though few would call it that). After decades of seeing their wealth drained upwards, and their concerns being ignored, they revolted by electing the most revolting person they could find. And the curtain has been thrown back on the Democratic Party and the elites who have been running it, turning it into Republican-lite. Hilary was their queen, and Biden is their loyal soldier. He is not the one to lead us forward, but will only keep us mired in the failed policies of the past. As the campaign unfolds, this will become clear, even to many of his supporters. Comprising with our enemies, whether foreign or domestic, only leads to more defeat.
Joe is from the party of "preemptive compromise" that brought us the ACA, simply a tweaked version of for-profit healthcare. And he was a signatory to the Great Wall St. Bail Out, NAFTA and TARP. Despite his blue collar roots, he has sold the working class out. Maybe that wasn't his intention, but you know the saying about the road to hell. It's time to move forward.
9
This takes a strange cut through contemporary political landscapes, like a person who walks through the woods by compass, instead of paths. Trouble is, politics is a winding road. The Yellow vests are well funded by the nationalist right, they're not starving or homeless. There was this thing called Dodd-Frank that answered the '08 crisis, which Biden protects and Republicans, Trump especially, want to gut. Trump isn't brilliant. He's a stand-up comedian who picked the right moment to mock Republican contenders in the '16 primary.
Biden's problem isn't Davos. It's simple. He doesn't think before he talks. Biden survives because he's got a decent core. He thrives, at times, because he seems authentic. But just because we have a rotten President shouldn't lower our standards. If Biden is President he's sure to say stuff he should have thought about first. Stuff like saying "They're not competition for us" about China. If he thought about it, he probably wouldn't say that.
It's like his "handsy" nature. Half of the time, if he thought about it first, he wouldn't bother. He lives in the moment, idiot savant like.
Cohen needs to get back on the path. Biden can beat Trump. Trump isn't part of a revolution. He's a joker, not a king. That's why people voted for him.
1
Roger I see you've learned nothing. Your sheets at president Obama and Hillary helped put trump in office. Now you're sheering at Biden will serve to respect trump. So the question is: are you a mole or a bourbon ( you know, forget nothing and learn nothing)?
1
Another anti-Biden article adding to the Choir. What else is new?
Well thought out arguments here. Roger is one of the few remaining level headed ones on the times staff, someone give him a promotion.
3
If Trump's policies are the future, can we not find a better messenger than this blowhard idiot? Some one yesterday at a news conference asked him about Slovakia; he said it was a beautiful country with a lot going for it. Does he know the difference betweeen Slovakia, Slovenia (the homeland of his wife) and Lower Slobovia?
1
I'll tell you what- Hilary WON in 2016, in spite of foreign interference and "all that jazz" that the media has been shoving
down my throat for 3 (LONG) years. Deal with it- RIGGED!
Michigan went to Trump by a vote SO CLOSE it wasn't even "real" in my book. And Hilary DID go to Flint, and she DID speak out about the (I can't say it here) governor and his "emergency declaration", etc. who, BTW, Trump supported. I know, a lot of working-poor white people (and some very rich W.P.) had seen enough progress pass them by. Bill Clinton TOLD THEM to take a night class, learn computer skills, fix cars, something- that would keep them above water. But set in their ways, they sat back in their "Archie Bunker" favorite chair, watched the game on TV, and drank the cheapest beer they could buy with their coupon ad in hand. Immigrants at Ellis Island
couldn't afford to wait around- if they had to push a food cart down the street or clean the street after traffic died down, they did it. And learn English at the same time. Obama had said perhaps he was looking too far into the future, but THE FUTURE IS HERE, NOW. But when a gunman opened fire on 1st graders, he should have raised Holy Hell EVERY DAY until laws got passed.
There was nothing so bad about the TPP either-in fact it was proposed to BEAT China in a global economic world which we can't afford to ignore. There are ALWAYS problems to address, but you can hit a speed bump going in reverse as well as forward.
So get on board!
2
The "revolutionaries" belong in a Democratic Congress where they might actually get something done like Elizabeth Warren did with her consumer protection bill. Lyndon Johnson is the last president I can remember who was able to push radical legislation through Congress. And there's not a Democratic Lyndon Johnson running now that I'm aware of. Democrats need to start thinking locally where revolutions actually happen. Republicans understand this well.
Many of the D candidates, the ones who get the most media coverage, have positioned themselves too far to the left to win in 2020. We can see this by the seats we picked up in Trump country last year. The Democratic winners were not revolutionaries and that's not what Trump's base are looking for, at least not in the way Democratic leftists are presenting it.
I see Biden as a place holder who has a chance of winning if the circular firing squad doesn't get him first. Democrats need to put Pete Buttigieg in a prominent place so he can figure out the path forward for the party. We're not there yet and no body else seems to be working on the problem. Perhaps because no one else sees the problem.
The Russian Republicans are strategically playing the perfect game by going complete predatory, neo-proto-Nazi, and neo-Big-Oil-Stalin bunkers pursuing a Kochtopus dystopia under the false flag of Conservatism spiced up by wooing bigoted, fundamentalist religious extremism and xenophobic hate, as they now have turned the Dems into reactionaries longing back for the good ole times of neo-liberal sell-out (the status-quo under siege that needs to be saved and conserved, which renders the return to neo-gliberalism light as the new conservative) under the false flag of Progressivism. Yay, you go, Joe.
So the Democrats are now poised to snub the revolution and reinstall Conservatism for them.
What a genius ploy and they're pulling it off effortlessly heading straight for the win, as the Democrats are collegially and congenially doing their co-swampy work for them.
3
Quality comment, Buonista Gutmensch!
Biden and his supporters think if he hangs around long enough, then he is entitled to be the nominee. If he survives the insults and lies from the GOP, and from his own missteps and gaffes, then he deserves the nomination.
Doesn't matter if Biden is a little dim; Trumpsky has trumped that for all time. Doesn't matter if Biden's a little clueless about kissing/ hugging/touching/smelling people, that's just Joe being Joe, like Trump being Trump but not quite as repulsive.
Doesn't matter if Biden is the poster boy of the quintessential pol, who by dint of staying power and a 40 watt smile, has managed to get past his sell-by date.
Yes, he can probably guarantee that all of, say, Pennsylvania will go to the dems; how he will appeal to rabid Trumpites is unexplained but it's a given: Joe delivers. Except what is he going to deliver?
Warren and Sanders and the rest of the democratic candidates understand and articulate the problems they have devised policies to solve. What's Biden got to offer?
We might ask, though Biden has been around forever, where has he been?
4
Biden has to first recognize the revolution exists; he does not. He could better serve the country by following in the footsteps of President Jimmy Carter or Obama.
I don't know why all these demo want to be president. it will take the next president at least 8 years to undo the damage this administration has done, like it took obama much of his presidency handling reckage from bush.
2
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. What we needed was a candidate who said and believed many of the things that Trump said, minus the racist and sexist overtones. What we got was a huckster who isn't capable of doing these things intelligently.
And now, instead of getting what we need, we have to get rid of what we have and start over. It's like the doctor gave us a prescription with the right label but the wrong pills.
For democracy to have any meaning in the future, it has to wrest control of the world's resources from the Davos types. It might be OK to be wealthy, but a few individuals can't be allowed to capture control of the things that the rest of us need to live. But first, we need to dump Trump and get reasonable leadership.
Perhaps the Davos people allowed Trump to win to scare us so that we would be satisfied with someone like Biden. See, the status quo isn't so bad after all. Or maybe I'm a bit paranoid.
In summary, the ideal presidential candidate is someone who is Innovative, intelligent and a better listener than Trump:
Warren & Buttigieg in 2020!!
2
Here’s what could easily happen Biden wins, dem retain the house, repub retain the senate, mcconnell continues to give his pompous speeches and NOTHING happens at all. Oh and the supremes lose another chair and they just blunder along
I think Biden will be Gerald Ford. Bien's vice-president is the person to look and lead beyond 2024.
Biden is too old and carries too much baggage. Thank And touting the desire to compromise with intransigent Republicans is a losing proposition. He'll never win.
1
I’ve read so many articles debunking the theory that trump attracted the voters representing the “forgotten man”.
What about all the women and minorities who preferr d and supported Clinton? What about all the well off republicans who supported trump?
Why does the NYTimes, surely an “elitists’” newspaper of choice, always seem to draw these comments and recommendations of being for the “common man”, when I doubt they know who these people actually are.
Since retiring and moving to a different economic level, the amount of scorn and lack of acceptance seems to come from these same type of people who like these articles in the NYTimes.
The last three Democrats to win the Presidency were largely unknowns until the Democrat primaries — Carter, Clinton and Obama.
Their opponents were already defined in the public’s mind and found wanting. Obscurity allowed these three to define themselves at the crucial moments near the end of the campaign when the ill informed begin to pay attention.
For this reason, Biden and Bernie are unlikely to win the nomination of their Party. Candidates such as Warner and Harris are fresh and competent faces and stand a real chance of beating Trump.
The role that Biden and Bernie will play is to be the losers that allow someone new to make their mark as a potential winner in November 2020.
2
With his 'China is not our competitor' comment, we see that "Middle Class Joe" has no intention of abandoning the stupid-politics speech (or even the just plain stupid speech) that has been his 40-years routine for the 'sake' of a third effort to win the prize of a Democratic Party, presidential-election nomination.
2
I beg to differ that Trump is a revolution. On the contrary, IMHO, he is an aberration. It wasn't his ideas that won peole over, but his smart focus on the rust belt, over and over again. Winning by 70,000 votes for an electoral win is not a change maker. Unless...he wins again in 2020. Then he will get my attention.
The world's greatest conman was somewhat an unknown for many of the middle class in 2016. Not so in 2020. I predict the nation's largest voter turnout ever.
The Dems have an amazing group of people running. Smart, onest, experienced, family friendly, and soothing to the soul.
My bet is on Kamela Harris and ...? Biden, or so many possibles?
Any one will be better than Trump.
1
Many of us share that disgust with self-serving "elites", but "fear and nationalism" are not at the heart of it, as Roger Cohen wants to think.
Mr. Cohen has in fact taken the prevailing elitist position: blame anyone but yourself and the policies you've promoted, for mass disaffection.
There's a word for it: the "neo-liberalism" embraced by both right-wing and nominal labor parties throughout the world over the last 40 years, and worst of all in the Anglo-American sphere.
Tony Blair there, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Obama here.
You don't have to be ignorant or fanatical, a yahoo of the age, to object to theft, lies, despoliation and moral turpitude, and all the while being told, you don't know what's good for you.
3
The Party of Davos has been very clever. For many years they've presented a false choice -- "do you want the free trade regime we've concocted, or do you choose trade wars and endless chaos? How about another option? Why can't the little guy (workers & unions) have a seat at the table when trade agreements are negotiated? Why can't workers be compensated with more than a few weeks of unemployment "insurance" when their industry has moved overseas?"
3
It is readily apparent that we are moving ever closer to a coup that will turn our country into an autocracy and neither Joe Biden or Robert Mueller will be able to save us. Our last hope is for people to take to the streets nationwide in protest to resist what is before us.Will those running for leadership call on the people to save our democracy or will they still abide by the old "rule of law" against a lawless administration and stand idly by as what is left of our republic is strangled. The future is not bright.
Amen Roger.
I would only add that the major media organs in the US have continued to function as the Mouthpieces of Davos.
The rich, well-connected, and well-placed are conducting a “War on Normal People” in the words of Andrew Yang. People must be provided the tools and support to live decent lives with a real shot for the vast majority to achieve security and happiness.
1
If Joe Biden can do nothing more than shoo Trump off the political stage, he will have done an immeasurable service to this country.
As has been noted, FDR was a pragmatic progressive and consummate politician. He knew that practical politics was the art of the possible. I think it was he who said something to the effect that "it is a terrible thing to lead a nation and look behind you to find that no-one is following."
But he was a fighter, too, and he never lost sight of who his opponents were and the danger that their greed and selfishness posed to the underdogs and downtrodden of the nation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LzXRPqQm8U
We desperately need someone with that combination of savvy and commitment today.
1
SANDERS-WARREN or even COMEY-SANDERS 2020
Character & integrity, please.
1
I've heard often that Biden is the best positioned to beat Trump in 2020. Why? Because he's male? Senior in age? White? A breath of fresh air Biden is certainly not. Hillary was brandied as "same-old", but Biden is much more "same-old" than she ever was.
1
Elections in the USA are about marketing and image, period. While readers of the Times can debate Davos policy ‘til the cows come home, the typical American voter just wants someone they perceive as “on their side” with whom they can identify, who projects an image of competence and strength. Sorry folks, but policy has precious little to do with it.
Jack Kennedy was not elected because of his intelligence and Harvard pedigree. He was elected in spite of it. So it has been and will be for the foreseeable future.
The best we can hope for is a candidate with the trifecta of image, competence and ethics but, as the current occupant of the White House demonstrates, ethics and competence are not essential to get the job.
2
Well, at least Biden is not an American business basher like many of the candidates. Trump won because he successfully scape-goated the Chinese, Mexicans and Muslims at the “Them” that crushed their salaries along with the American Dream. He will repeat this approach in 2020 aided by a much stronger American economy. Dems need to explain how we got here with lost middle class while arguing for a different set of priorities (Environment, legal Immigration, Education, Infrastructure and Health) as Economic opportunities vs, the wasteful overspending on the military we have today.
When you stand in the center, you get run over by both sides.
2
How can you say Trump leads a revolt against the elite when his every action affirms his slavish obedience to his elite class status and his Republican enablers?
You don't give unfunded tax cuts to the elite and appoint elite cronys to your cabinet if you are leading a revolt against them. Appointing a coal lobbyist to run the EPA is hardly storming the Bastille
Maybe his cult thought they were revolting against the elite when they voted for him, but it's profoundly obvious that they were suckered into voting against their interests.
Insightful Mr Cohen, and no easy answers.
Uncle Joe is hardly visionary or politically avant garde, but far more about the old guard. He also has a whiff of the same sense of Democratic Party coronation that dogged Hillary in 2016.
If beating Trump is the only imperative then reformation is a lost cause and the outcome will be more of the same.
Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that! Not that the GOP or trump will ever let her assume power when she wins. Who will stop him?
1
Yes, it's true that there was economic anxiety fueled by stagnation and anemic growth for the majority in the face of rapidly expanding globalism. But I would say at the core, even deeper than the economic discontentment, was the one that based on racial tension, more visceral and raw, an anger at a love betrayed, which was what Trump stoked and is stoking. The belief that the system is rigged against them is an euphemism that masks their bitter disappointment in seeing a non-white leader in the sacred space that they'd believed solely belonged to them.
Joe Biden is an "aw shucks" politician who still believes his friendliness with Republicans can turn the violent partisanship affecting Washington into a bi-partisan collaboration. Apparently he's never met Mitch McConnell.
Spoiler alert, Joe; politics is now a violent contact sport, think Roman Coliseum. "Aw shucks" just won't cut it.
We need a forceful, eloquent, policy savvy candidate who can literally slug it out with Trump and the hired guns at Fox without getting down into their gutter. We need a candidate that can expose them for the phonies they are while at the same time presenting and really communicating well thought out big tent ideas and 21st century plans for our future that can work for all Americans, not just the 1%, and not just the 99%, but for all Americans.
Joe is tremendously valuable to the Democrats, as an elder statesman and advisor, but he's not the Gladiator we need at this perilous moment in history.
This is going to be a bloody battle against an incumbent and ruthless enemy with blind and unscrupulous (but very profitable) support from an entire news (infomercial) organization. (In reality Fox is no longer a news organization.) Hillary lost because she was just not the right candidate, neither for the times nor for the competition. We made that mistake, it was ours, no one else's. We are to blame. But the past 28 months have clearly shown that we just cannot afford to make that same mistake twice.
May the force be with us.
4
Joe Biden has been, is and always will be the Senator from Delaware, the State in the US most active in shielding money - an activity he defended throughout his career.
Not blaming him, he needs to defend the interest of his State, But it is precisely this what decouples him from working Americans.
Over a million businesses—more than 50 percent of publicly traded companies in the U.S. and more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies—are incorporated in Delaware , more than the State has inhabitants.
5
The evidence for your argument that Biden is not a good counter-Trump candidate is strong & right - at this moment. But the 2020 candidates & their campaigns are so fluid right now. I think the strongest candidates will be those who can adapt their campaigns to all the changes we're in for while still having their core message intact.
Here are some things to consider now:
1) Biden is wooing unions, many of whose members (the white male members, that is) voted for Trump and probably aren't too enamoured with the GOP tax cut.
2) Following that, the only significant group of Americans supporting Trump are white men.
3) The majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, despite strong economic factors. The % of Americans who approve of him has been constant for most of his presidency at about 35%.
4) That being said, working & middle class Americans have voted for Republicans despite their policies benefiting the 1%. I'm not sure if they will support Warren's tax on the 1%. Republicans are prepared to pound the "socialism" drum even as they continue to fawn over Putin.
Excellent, insightful column. Like many Americans, I have favorable views of Biden, and I imagine he'd have a good chance of beating Trump - his appeal cuts across ethnic and class lines, and I imagine there are going to be a lot of Americans ready to vote for any reasonable alternative to the daily chaos and corruption of this dumpster fire of an administration.
But Biden is indeed an emblem - and a booster - of the status quo that led to Trump (and to Brexit, and to the resurgence of right-wing populism in the European continent). Biden's de facto promise is "let's go back to the good old days of 2014," which is music to the ears of the educated and the affluent (and much of the media class), but ignores the groundswell of dissatisfaction and resentment that was building among those left behind.
Much of that resentment was cultural - especially in America, given the white backlash to two terms of a black president - but much of it is economic. Bernie Sanders would be just an unknown senator otherwise. It's clear that the Democratic establishment supports the Davos-ites - and while they may defeat Trump in 2020 anyway, I'm afraid if they go back to the neoliberal status quo they're laying the groundwork for another Trump-like figure down the road. Maybe even a competent one.
5
Dear Mr. Cohen: 3 comments on your Op Ed:
1. It is a bit too early. Joe Biden is just one of over 20 contenders vying for the nomination and there is over a year to go before the Democrats choose who will be the nominee to defeat Donald Trump.
2. Most certainly the dilemma for the Democrats is how to get more Democratic voters to the election booth. Trump has a devoted cadre of supporters that will never vote for a Democrat. Success for the eventual candidate will depend on turnout.
3. Revolutionary is an adjective few would apply to Donald Trump or anyone else associated with his Presidency. He panders to the religious right. And it works because an overwhelming percentage of Evangelical "Whites" voted for Donal Trump.
Given the slate of democratic nomination wannabes, I foresee electoral doom for the democrats in 2020. As a lifelong democrat I am not very happy that we will probably see four more years of Trump, the worst thing to happen to this country.
1
Cohen hits most points accurately. But he leaves out the critical factor of Independents, the largest bloc of voters in the U.S. (44%) and the group that the Dems need to inspire to get out and vote. Biden is incapable of inspiring that group - he's too entrenched in the old system; Independents generally are put off by the kind of party system Cohen describes above; they want someone who thinks outside the boxes of traditional party politics - and that's NOT Biden. Trump's presidency has exposed how fragile our democracy is, and shined a bright light on the areas where it's needs to be fortified. It will take a candidate who knows how to operate "outside the box" to beat him. Biden's "platform" of going back to the pre-Trump era misses the mark and offers nothing on how to move forward; how to move forward is the litmus test independents will be using for 2020. It's interesting that unpolished O'Rourke came out on top of the recent poll that actually included Independents; Dems may not view him as viable, but the general public has clearly picked up his focus of solving problems for everyone and not getting groomed to be a Party hack. BTW his immigration piece (mocked and barely covered by the press) does an excellent job of addressing all the dimensions and nuances of that complex issue...
Yes, Warren is indeed the smartest girl in the room. (I love one commenter's Lisa Simpson reference!) Her well-thought out positions appeal greatly to me. Her problem, it seems, is her delivery. While it is petty to mention, we all know that many voters want to "like" their candidate. Warren comes across as hectoring and lecturing, a scolding nun from a 1950s Catholic school. I think it turns many people off. I don't know why her team doesn't work on a less strident persona. Again, I wish people would just look at a candidate's approach to issues and to their seriousness of purpose, but it doesn't work that way. Many Trump voters "just couldn't bring [themselves] to vote for Hillary."
5
Warren has a high-pitched voice. Unfortunately many people associate that with excitability. AG Barr no matter what you think of him has a whiny babyish voice. Yet he can get away with it for no other reason than that he’s male. Warren could use some professional speech delivery help.
1
@btcpdx
What's astounding is that so many in this country respond positively to Donald Trump's 'delivery.' I'm so disappointed in this country for not being 'turned off' by it, and downright ashamed of the Republican politicians who shake in their boots with deference to him. The whole thing is just sickening. I'd like to see a list of these fantastic Republicans Joe Biden thinks are out there who would be willing to work with him. Did he not notice what they did to Obama for eight years?
Warren's not out of it yet. Sure, she lectures like a schoolmarm, but we here in Massachusetts have come to like her for it. She means what she says and she has good ideas. I'm rather tired of worrying about how a candidate comes across, especially after watching people cheer for Trump. Warren shouldn't try to change herself, she should just keep delivering her message. Those heartland people need a good talking to. Maybe enough of them will listen.
Once again, Roger Cohen offers the clearest perspectives on why Biden’s time has past. And for those who constantly link Warren and Sanders as the most likely candidates to directly address the needs and concerns of the working class, just look at the solutions each proposes. There’s no meat on the bones of Sanders’s proposals, just furious assertions.
Only Warren carefully outlines immediate changes to our political and societal infrastructure that she would undertake that would begin to correct the imbalances in our society. Thus far, she is the only candidate to do so. She deserves our support far more than the independent senator from Vermont who offers a great deal of sound and fury, but few legislative solutions to the enormous problems a new Democratic president would face.
4
I'm concerned that some progressives just throw giveaways at every interest group: reparations, universal income, medicare for all, student loan forgiveness. Do they have responsible estimates for all costs? Do they realize that those with private insurance subsidized by their employers have additional tax-free income that they would have to cover, plus covering insurance for those who have none - all with their taxes? Do they understand that many hospitals will get broke if they are paid only current medicare rates? Universal coverage does not have to be based on a single-payer model. Student loan forgiveness for future data scientists, doctors, and lawyers?.. What they mean is like, well, if you chose 'wrong major' and cannot meet ends, we'll pay your debt... I even don't want to start with other broad giveaways: who's gonna flip burgers and collect garbage? As for Davos, let's face it, our civilization is driven by entrepreneurs, some of whom are filthy rich, lawfully and deservedly. Finally, as some economists pointed out, elimination of all current tax loopholes would be more productive than imposing new taxes. But, of course, "let's tax them" sounds better in a stump speech...
1
The ideological framework of Neoliberal finance capitalism is at the root of the changes attributed here to culture and politics. The economy has created massive inequality, concentrated wealth and political power in the top 0.1%, and driven down standards of living and future prospects for the middle class and poor.
People understand that.
Sanders understands that.
Time for the media to connect the economic dots to the rise o trumps.
2
I believe Roger Cohen is correct. The same Democrats and swing voters who abandoned Hillary Clinton in 2016 may well see Joe Biden as Hillary in a suit and tie and reject him in 2020. Biden, like Clinton, represents the same old, middle-of-the-road Democratic establishment. Why on earth would Democrats see him as their ticket to the White House. I fear that too many Democrats are once again counting on Trump to lose, rather than trying to win.
7
Elizabeth Warren - Sherrod Brown is the ticket to bring down Trump and put our country in line with what is happening in the world TODAY. The economy is where Trump will stand and fight if it remains where it is right now. Mrs. Warren has already explained and will continue to explain that even though there are jobs, jobs, jobs, they are not the jobs of yesteryear. They are low paying and many don't offer benefits or any kind of longer term security. Warren has explained this and will continue to do so leading up to the election. Joe Biden had his chances and did some fine work in the past but that's the whole point...the kind of work he did, just like your grandfathers jobs are gone and probably not coming back any time soon, if ever. We need people with policies that clearly state how we will attack today's problems with fresh ideas...and Joe...you don't have any of those ideas from what I can see.
6
How about a Obama-Hillary in 2020!
@swenk Yes, proof positive that the Democratic Party has nothing new to offer. I believe that the Rolling Stones intend to tour again, too.
Trump sleeps with a porn star, lies to his wife and to the American people about it . . .
He says that there are good people participating in a Neo-Nazi rally . . .
His former campaign manager is in prison for money laundering . . .
His former lawyer is going to prison . . .
He did nothing to discourage a hostile foreign power from helping his campaign . . .
But Biden said something about China. I guess he's doomed.
7
As Pete Buttigieg says, people who voted for Trump know he isn’t a good person. You seem to be deliberately missing the whole point of this essay. Everyone knows Biden is a good guy, but Roger clearly shows why nominating him would be a mistake. We need to move forward.
6
I fear the real aberration is our founding father's constitutional democracy.
We had a good run but both Trump and Biden, despite his rhetoric, represent the elite that now govern and voter's will or needs be damned.
Each has shown through most of their actions rather than words that they cater to special interests. They, and their like, lack the imagination and integrity of the founding fathers, perhaps more important than ever in our climate-changing, hate-filled times.
2
@Concerned American
The parliamentary democracies of mainland Europe proved to be a disaster during the previous middle of the previous century. There's no way to buffer divergent opinions against each other. 51% rule is often to intolerable to the other 49%.
They don't have to get along.
Wall Street has been sticking it to Main Street for decades...enough is enough. Please stop pushing their agenda, it's demeaning to your paper.
That’s because the US has become a country of nincompoops.
1
Why is it easier to blame Hillary Clinton who actually won the election by almost three million votes than it is to blame the Republican party whose voter suppression, gerrymandering, and Russia assisted campaigning are the reasons we have Trump for our president? Being a Democrat in the reddest region of a red state requires some pragmatism and devotion. That makes it really hard to see why people making these comments, who appear to be from each of the coasts and live in blue states, continue to feel it's necessary to dig at the heart and soul of what makes us Democrats in a way that weakens us. How do we beat Trump? Not by dividing us, labeling us, blaming us. We are all liberals, and we should proudly claim that. We will accomplish nothing otherwise. If the majority of Democrats feel that Joe Biden is our best bet to win the presidency, we shouldn't assist the Republicans in wounding him or any other candidate. Wake up.
3
Is the NYT starting to get a clue?
2
Gosh do you think that Roger May be on to something. Trump listened and Clinton didn’t. What a political concept.
1
Biden is one of the few politicians who HASN'T gotten ridiculously rich off of his office. Like it or not, most Dem and Independent VOTERS are centrists. And, its the condescension by people like you and the commenters who are trying to force a move to the left that will divide the resistance to Trump. The people want decency, calm, and stability, not ideology.
3
Right now, Biden is the one who can beat Trump, not because he has a better message, which Cohen clearly lays out: he doesn’t.
He is not only not progressive but also, as Cohen lays out: he is reactionary and out of touch.
So where’s my beef? Hillary lost for many reasons that are totally unrelated. She was (is) a woman; she had a vulnerable past from successfully smearing, albeit false, accusations and inquiries; she carried the stain of Clintonism (trivial actions by today’s low bar); she withstood bogus investigations while campaigning—bolstered by wiki-leaks and a complicit press relishing with delight; she went up against a complicit FBI which days before hurled an unorthodox and unfair accusation—also magnified by the media—and many other stones hurled until she died—politically .
That’s why she lost. Surely her mis-steps were devastating: agreed.
The problem with Cohen’s opinion is the narrow focus, an equally misleading argument. Defeating Trump is worth it to me even if it only gives me relief from listening to him and getting nauseous every day.
A Biden victory will be my antacid, plus some executive power—now enhanced—drift to slightly more progressive and less dangerous actions.
Not fully progressive or “in touch?” Ok, I give Cohen that. Let me get the antacid.
1
As usual from Roger Cohen--brilliant insights!
Problems like unlimited immigration, the poor getting poorer, the decline of public education and so on and so on are deep seated and do call for intelligent and caring innovation.
2
The Wall St. big boys who ARE the Democratic Establishment--just look at how Obama destroyed himself with the white masses by sending none to jail, giving them huge bonuses instead--have nowhere else to go but Biden. But do these guys really care if a Hillary or a Biden wins? As Trump's tax-cuts for the rich so perfectly illustrated, Republicans are as great for the rich as the rich's Dem puppets. All Wall St. really wants to do is stop Bernie, or any economic progressive. If they do that, they're in Fat City, whether their Dem puppet or the Republican wins the White House for the rich. All talk of "Do they remember that the Davos candidate didn't win in 2016?" is misplaced. Such a question assumes the Dem Establishment's primary goal is winning. It's not. It's just keeping the Democratic Party firmly center-RIGHT economically with the usual yuppie Boomer formula of "socially liberal [Identity Politics, which costs the rich Boomers zilch], but fiscally conservative." Hillary and Biden were perfect embodiments of this value system. Bernie currently beats Trump just as badly as Biden does in the polls. But Wall St.'s ace in the hole for their Biden, as for Hillary, is Wall St.'s total control of the Southern black vote. Amazingly, Biden crushes both Harris and Booker in SC! What a shock! Wall St. controls the black machine, including black preachers, the same way rich Republicans control Evangelicals. Both groups keep Dem and Republican average people voting for the rich.
1
Roger Cohen, nice article, but in the end you say, only the innovative will beat Trump. Very true, but where are they ? Not in the Democratic Party, unfortunately (NB - I would not consider the “green deal” fraction as innovative, since their concepts are not that new, yawn).
You may be right, Biden is a long, long way from being a "dream" candidate on many levels, except for the most important one, he may give us the best chance to win.
He will get in the mud with Trump and attack, he won't lay back like Jeb Bush or John Kerry, whose attempts to highlight their "dignity" by not engaging with schoolyard taunts or scurrilous lies ended disastrously.
People don't want to see candidates with good manners, they want one that they "believe in", whatever that means.
With GWB, they believed for some bizarre reason that they wanted to have a hamburger with him. Go figure.
With Trump, his supporters acknowledge and accept the fact he's a lying con man, but he's their lying con man and he's going to try like heck to build a wall no matter what.
What's our "wall" going to be, and can Biden be a successful messenger for it?
Maybe. But until somebody from that unruly herd of Democratic Wildabeests breaks out of the pack, Biden is the best chance we have.
Who can beat Trump and win the Senate and statehouses and expand the majority in the House?
Did the Russians change the election results in America. So far all politicians tell us no. They point at voting machines and say “no votes were changed’ and walk away. Most recently, the figures of the FB hack of Americans was 70 million. Why would advertisers want to get the personal profiles and the friend accounts of 70 million Americans? To change their behavior? To get them to buy products? And could their targeted ads be profitable to the companies they represent? Might a foreign adversary try to change the voting behavior of 70 million voters? Would they feed them “fake news”, or call the press “the enemy of the people”, or insist that the “election is rigged” to discourage voters or discredit the news? Would a foreign adversary foment hatred of Clinton and discourage Sanders voters to vote for Trump or Jill Stein?
The Trump phenomenon is much more nefarious than “Hillary ran a bad campaign” or “was not a good candidate”. The Biden campaign is dangerously aligned with the same players who are oblivious to the extent of the Russian success. Is this hyperbole? Did Trump just spend an hour on the phone with Putin in which he referred to the Mueller report as a hoax and Russia’s psy-ops cyberattack as unimportant....nonexistent, again?
So porn star, playboy 23 women accusers of sexual assault, pending deals in Moscow, polling data handed to Russians, outrageous lies all work?
1
Sorry, I don't buy Mr. Cohen's argument. He
seems determined to drive a wedge among Democrats around the subject of monied elites, and thus reduce the appeal of Biden. This is just more mindless class warfare that Republicans favor. Why should we believe Mr. Cohen, who defended billionaire Rupert Murdoch (who owns Fox 'News') in a 2011 NY Times op-ed as being good for journalism?
1
You're overthinking it, Brother Roger. You are assuming a level of analysis among the electorate that is, to put it mildly, absent. The 2016 race was a perception war between chardonnay and Budweiser. Bud won. If Biden gets the nod, he'll show up at the first debate driving the Clydesdales with a deer rifle strapped to his back, a Bible under one arm and the other arm around Miss America. Adlai Stevenson he ain't. So what? Trump he ain't. That's all that matters.
8
So Trump handed 300 million by his father, a so called billionaire, in bed with Deutsche Bank and a well documented corrupt real estate developer is now what some people think is the “anti Davos”.
Just when you think parts of this country can’t get anymore stupid and gullible - it does.
God help America.
2
This column is full of half-truths and one outright lie: "Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton." Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump.
3
Biden’s baggage is full. No doubt any candidate who has been in office that long will have it. But it’s not a question of forgiving or dismissing.
He has always connected with the average guy and gal. And he’s no idiot. He is also courting Republicans in this race, but hopefully will work towards getting more Democrats elected.
The question of the status quo had already been answered when Trump got elected.
We absolutely need a candidate who can beat Trump, and Trump still has a strong chance of being re-elected if the Dems go with anyone who doesn’t appeal to the swing states.
However, Joe can also be the catalyst for change. He sees the need for Climate Change, Health and Environment issues. He knows that rights are being eroded by Republicans. Did we ever think LBJ would be the president to persuade Congress to pass Civil Rights?
Good pols evolve! Biden sees the changes in young voters too and if he wants a legacy that will make him a great president, he will know how to bridge Wall Street and Main Street. Not just with jobs, but a real living wage! He will know how to make medical care a right rather than a privilege. He will put allies, not despots back in play. He will enhance our State Department that is now broken. He knows the players and system better than most candidates. Trump has taught Dems never to acquiesce. Joe won’t!
And the first thing he or any Democratic winner must do is release the children in cages!
2
How many NY Times readers-(Mr Cohen included), remember that Mr Roger Cohen, was a staunch Republican who supported George Bush for both terms. He wrote from Iraq in -I believe '06, reassuring Americans that our military had the situation easily in hand. He got out of his armored vehicle with several layers of body armor on, and actually stood in the middle of an empty Baghdad street with only 50 or so US troops,(not including their worried officers), to protect his 24Kt butt.
In the last few years, Cohen has moved toward the center of US politics, but almost anyone of his background-a white raised in white ruled South Africa who became an American-wrote for many extreme conservative papers for years- also would've run left after the maniac Trump accident.
The point to remember for all Democrats is that we must have peace within the party. We have to accept Democrats regardless of their origins.
It would do every Democrat to recall one of the greatest and most tragic of Democratic Presidents-Lyndon Johnson-who began in the Senate as a racist segregationist, passed numerous civil rights acts as President-and actually abandoned his second term to allow a peace conference in Paris, over the Vietnam war-(which Nixon and Kissinger sunk.)
Churchill said(re Soviet Alliance): "I would accept the Devil as an ally, if he would help to defeat Hitler". Lets not split political hairs-and recall most Democratic candidates are too young to serve.
@meloop LBJ launched the Vietnam debacle by sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to that beleaguered country. You probably weren't around then to know that Johnson was hated & despised by millions for his war. He was a fool & an opportunist. Great he was not.
His presence at a time when civil rights were an inevitability was pure luck.
@Apple Jack
Lyndon Johnson was a decent man and a good politician. He championed the poor from the moment he started his adult life as a schoolteacher in Texas. He understood and cared greatly about domestic issues but was weak on foreign policy, which led him to unthinkingly follow the advice of his generals when it came to our involvement in Vietnam. That was unfortunate, as he would have been one of the greatest presidents this country ever had if Vietnam hadn't derailed him.
Oh, and I was around then.
1
Thank God for Roger Cohen and the New York Times. This piece by Cohen and the article by Goldmacher in today's Times have pulled me back from the brink of nostalgia. Both illustrate what is certainly true. It's not the Man, Stupid. It's the Party. And the reality of the lives of people on the ground. For a brief moment I thought I had found my candidate. I will just have to keep on looking.
1
If Democrats are dumb enough to nominate Biden for President, they deserve another four years of Trump.
3
You can not start a thesis with a lie. The jobs of the mid-west were lost because companies refused to reinvest in themselves and innovate and pushed their old factories to the max until they wouldn't work any more. Yes China took advantage but we let them and we made money doing it.
Italy is not an expample, They have embraced China. The movement you speak of carries the language and tone of Nazi Germany, but it is Biden-like leaders throughout the world that have given us peace and prosperity. We need to be more progressive but we don't need to be preaced to. We need someone to appeal to our "Better Angels" and listen to each other and work with each othre. That isn't what Trump is doing. If Biden can get us back to the point where we respect each other listen more, he will be a welcome transition to a new era.
"but the rightist Vox party came from nowhere to take 10.3 percent of the vote, entering Parliament and breaking a post-Franco taboo".
It needs mentioning that in Germany the arch-right anti-those-"Others" party, AfD [Alternative for Deutschland] was breaking a post-Adolf taboo by winning over 12% of the popular vote and becoming the third largest party in the Bundestag, while in France Marine LePen's National Rally party is and was breaking the post-Vichy taboo.
1
Focus on the Senate. McConnel has shown that the GOP can rule mostly as it likes, regardless who is in the White House. Any Dem in the White House will be totally shipwrecked by McConnel's '(dis)loyal opposition.'
1
There's only ONE thing that can beat the utterly corrupt Trump and GOP at the polls, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the Democratic candidate in itself (it's already certain that he or she will come up with a campaign platform that the vast majority of the American people and on most issues even a majority of GOP voters today support).
And that one thing is: will "we the people" finally have become "politically literate" enough to start voting for POLICIES, or will we once again get distracted by utterly irrelevant things such as "charisma" and "age", or lofty ideals?
The Democrats' policies SYSTEMATICALLY reduce income inequality and address the exact same problems this op-ed is talking about.
Will people be able to focus on that?
Or will they believe the fake news that Democrats have been as corrupt as the GOP until now, so that "fresh ideas" and "new faces" are necessary before we can still acknowledge that they're incomparably better than the GOP?
Op-eds like this one clearly try to blur the boundaries of what's morally right.
That's not going to help to create clarity about what is at stake in 2020 ...
4
Thank God for Roger Cohen. His intelligence and the lucidity of his writing is as usual a light in the darkness of the ignorance that surrounds us on all sides.
The French are trying their best to save us from ourselves (and in this case from Joe Biden and the Democratic Establishment). Alexis de Tocqueville gives us The Ancien Regime; we all know how it turned out for them. Talleyrand likewise speaks of the Democratic Establishment, who with their complete disregard of the obvious lessons of 2016, "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing."
If they persist in their ignorance, ignoring both the need and the cries for real change in the Democratic nominee for President in 2020, we turn perforce to the Englishman Charles Dicken's A Tale Of Two Cities for guidance. All I can hear now is the clicking of Madame Defarge's knitting needles. If Joe Biden, the Democratic Establishment and the DNC had ears, they'd be hearing it too, loud and clear.
But they are deaf, and act accordingly.
5
I don't understand the absence, in the article and in the comments, of a discussion of the theft happening now under the so called Trump revolution. If the Dems sold out the middle class to corporate greed, what do we say about the absolutely open theft happening under trump, who sells foreign policy to the highest bidder and wages war on the democratic system itself? The longer view here would not lay blame on the Dems but look at the way that making corporations into persons, according to the law, has essentially made government the handmaiden to a non-nationalist, global elite 1% capitalism. Trump may not be an elite in the usual sense of the word, but we are wrong not to see the revolution he stands for as a long march of accumulation of wealth by global elites who are cutting up the pie differently than international liberalism did.
4
Roger is absolutely correct but the first order of business is to get rid of Trump. 2024 may be too late. The measure of who has the best chance of doing that is polls of the complete electorate (with some emphasis on "swing" states), not an internal Democratic beauty contest. Some of the current favorites are probably unelectable by that standard.
2
Trump did not 'win'. The electoral college gave him the victory. Therefore, he did not, and does not, represent the majority of voters in this country.
2
He did win. The electoral college is the game and until the electoral college is eliminated, it is the only route to the presidency.
A few points: Biden is more likable that HRC -- not to mention Trump. Also, Trump may pretend to rage against the machine, but it's him and his party who have given tax cuts to the wealthy and are actively waging war on the EPA. Whom does that benefit? Oil and coal, of course. The Koch's might not be Trump fans, but the same old crowd is benefiting from Trump's policies. Pay attention to the Rust Belt and never take it for granted again.
Trump is an impostor. His policies do not benefit the working class.
5
These are not ordinary times. The political climate is changing as fast as the actual climate—and neither is going back to what it was.
My fear is that the era of liberal democracy is over. Our economic system may be collapsing of its own success. Technological innovation, specialization of labour, mass production, globalization, corporatism, capitalism—together all have made our economy as productive as it ever has been. Vast wealth has been created and standards of living have risen exponentially across much of the world.
But these great successes are also leading to great wealth inequities, an increasing lack of financial security and stability among the majority of the population, and a looming environmental crisis that may well turn out to be a catastrophe. Authoritarian governments like Russia's and China's are in some ways every bit as successful and stable as the liberal democracies. And authoritarianism is easy on the people. It lifts the heavy burden of governing oneself from one's shoulders. If the ruler can deliver food and security dependably, how valuable really is freedom?
Maybe there is an alternative vision for the future. Maybe some Democrat will be able to allay the people's fears and offer some compelling solution to our crises of financial insecurity, decaying communities, and environmental degradation. But I'm afraid our problems are too large and complex. The people want simple solutions. They want a saviour. They will elect a charlatan.
3
In his many books,Thomas Frank talks about how Democrats too often compromised their political view in order to compete with republicans. They became too technocratic and too elitist. Clinton,Biden and Obama tried this compromise approach. It has not worked to bring about the new policies we need. It helped to distance the Democratic Party from its roots. The next democratic candidate must make a forceful campaign to convince voters that we must bring government back to the public with less emphasis on privatization. With a strong economy and many still supporting Trump,it will not be easy but the compromising of the past has only cemented outdated republican policies.
5
It will be both the innovative and the young who perhaps
can bring a new kind of wholeness to this disrupted country.
Change happens, Trump still rides the wave, Biden, bless him
doesn't get it. Listen to the teenagers about Climate Change.
Listen to the middle class who cannot pay their medical bills.
Biden cannot catch the next wave--the millennials are our
only hope. I'm 76 and yes am part of a huge voting block.
But we too are way behind the times. We splashed in the
foam at the seashore. We need deep sea divers. Let's hope there are still pearls of wisdom and a way up and out before earth herself collapses. Oh very young, I'm counting on you
5
I am not pushing Joe Biden's candidacy at this point - it is still early days and I am waiting to see which candidate will perform best in coming months and on the debate state and in the polling. My objection is to the general attitude and assumptions that drive this point of view that equates moderate Democrats and all of the Democratic Party that is not far left with an alliance with oligarchs and elties, that encourages voters to beleive that all Democrats not on the far left are as bad as the Republicans, unconcerned about the poor and working class, etc. - or that understanding the crisis of global warming and giving it priority is antithetical to caring about workers in polluting industrities. There is an old saying that goes something like this: "“That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.” In this case the half-truth is that in any political arena money will talk and in any endeavor involving vast numbers of human beings some will have less sterling integrity than others and so yes, the Democratic Party is far from perfect and has room for improvement. But that doesn't mean that Democrats like Joe Biden play in the same ballpark as the totally corrupt Trump, Mitch McConnell, Stephen Miller, Lindsey Graham, William Barr, and the GOP "Freedom Caucus."
6
There is some truth to the populist theory of trump but it misses a lot. What it misses is named here but only briefly and is conflated with the righteous anger of the "little people" who have been economically shortchanged by political elites. That other thing(s) - so much a part of trumpianism- is/are racism, nativism and nationalism and they likely are a more resonant part of trump's message.
Biden is not the harbinger of fundamental economic change like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren but then those who support trump don't really seem to want income redistribution in the form of universal health care, free higher education or higher taxes on the wealthy. They seem to want someone who will say those things out loud they have had to say behind closed doors for many years now. That is what "make America great again" is really all about and Biden may be the best positioned to call trump out on it.
2
I would say Trump was better at pretending to listen than Hillary was. This is all theater.
5
@Michelle Hillary Clinton relied on fawning focus groups and a pandering press, which led to self-deception that people liked her enough to vote for her
2
@Jim - Interesting point. Thought-provoking. Thank you.
In November 2016 I was in London having drinks with a major oil CEO. "The global liberal elite are now a dirty word," he said, pulling out his iPhone to respond to a text message from another elite in Boston. "We took too much. And because of this (his iPhone), everyone now can see." He added,"I should have been spending my time not in Paris or Venice in the last 10 years, but in St. Louis." Trump understood the change in mindset and the GLE still do not. Davos is dead.
4
This article almost gets it right, but falls short because of TDS. Firstly, it'd be honest to give credit when credit is due - would you have called Obama an imposter if he saw similar need and filled it, he would have been praised to high heaven. Secondly, if you had read any of Trump's decades long books or kept up with his utterances, you would know that despite his wealth he always had an undercurrent of the disenfranchised. Trump didn't grab an opportunity to be an imposter, that is left to those who talk one way very morally and cash in another way in practice, he recognized the subterranian unfairness and promised his bit to fix it.
2
Then trump broke his promises to the working middle class and gave the billionaires everything they want, just so he could grift the American people by trampling the Emoluments clauses, among other things.
1
Opinion noted. Can we get on with the primary?
The left has been pretty useless over the last fifty years. They earned points on the civil rights movement and made a mess of the Vietnam war by going against our troops. They were mostly privileged white upper middle class or somehow aspired to be. They had comfortable lives and couldn't imagine life for white people being otherwise. Being poor and the working class wasn't an economic issue it became to them a matter of race. It will be hard for the left to convince us they are for all the people instead of a band of useful idiots. When Hillary decided she didn't need us deplorable wasn't she being consistent with her 60's roots.
Mr. Cohen, I usually disagree with you. This column has changed my mind. Maybe I misunderstood what you've been saying all along. All I can say keep up the good work.
1
In this piece Trump comes off looking so good that we question why we want to see him defeated.
2
An insightful, perceptive piece. An old story though. Most of the world still seeks a savior, a messiah. And, likely out of the wrong motive seeking interests of self, chooses the fake one. Trump is one of the fake ones, which is now clear. The question is, Who is responsible for this ... for the choice of him or one like him? And another question is, What will it take for this, in principle, to change?
3
Destroy the Fox News outrage machine and other propaganda tools of the amoral in the billionaire class who run this country.
2
This last week of Congressional tomfoolery with Barr and Mueller being bashed has set my teeth on edge. It is one of the reasons I considered Biden as a calming force: a breath of fresh air.
If Biden is, as you suggest, out of touch, well, we have plenty of choices remaining. The fact is, that our economy is thriving and that makes Trump a hard fight. The fact that he is rotten to the core is still a huge factor and one that must be addressed.
Lets pair up Warren with someone younger and positive, and see where that takes us. I agree that she is saying the right things. But whoever the Democrats ultimately choose to run, that person has a huge task before them.
4
Sen. Warren is well know for listening to and protecting the interests of the average citizen--the 1st priority in a democracy. But in a system where the court legalizes unlimited donations by the financial elites, equated with 'free speech', the voice of the people is muffled.
Why doesn’t the media discuss what Sanders said? That the US lost 3 million mfg jobs to the 200 China trade deal, as well as other trade deals under various presidents. That's not a big story?
Biden was called “the senator from MBNA”. He cozied up to to credit card companies and made filing for bankruptcy harder for families in debt, many for medical expenses. Where is this in the constant media coverage on him?
Biden’s record is a big contrast to Eliz Warren who fought for families in debt. Biden is out of step with positive political trends.
See April 25 article by Lee Fang in the Intercept: “ Biden launches Presidential bid with fundraiser filled with corporate lobbyists and GOP donors."
The media reports who is ahead in fund raising like a sports contest. But the media must trace and compare the biggest donors to each candidate and discuss what these donors expect for their investment.
Then we the people can decide how much representation we are likely to get for our vote.
4
Fair analysis. Biden's also one of the worst debators I have ever seen. Not everyone can become the president of the United States. You have to be above a certain threshold at debating. Quite frankly, Biden embarassed Obama and the Democratic Party during each of his VP debates. No one really watches VP debates or vote based on it. However, his performances simply would not cut it for a presidential debate. He is meat for Warren to slay. People forget but will be reminded of this. He was not presidential when he was in his 40s. He was not presidential when he was in his 50s. Why do the radical centrists in the Democratic Party think he will have improved on this glaring weakness in his mid-70s? Seems illogical or at least contrary to human existance at the very least. He has no chance. He will be picked off. And after that, where will the radical centrists go? Back to Clinton? Too many people --including this one--have dirt on them. They and their followers--including the brilliant and vibrant Huma Abedin are corrupt. Not only are they corrupt, they have gotten involved in plots that involve attempted murder. There is tape of Huma trying to run a 'Bernie-Bro' over. They have already lost. And once Biden is knocked out, Clinton knows better than to run. This is Elizabeth Warren's race. We do not need Hillary. Stay out!
1
The common people are so disillusioned with the ruling class and business as usual that they’d rather have the court jester sitting on the throne than another self serving royal.
1
Roger Cohen, welcome to the China hate-club. The only thing that could unite fractured USA is the revival of "Yellow Peril". It lines up with the rising tide of White Supremacy Racism. Unfortunately, American Democracy cannot be saved or cured by imagining a common enemy.
America Democracy is a very sick baby and the media is no help. Just think: why is it important news to report how many millions are raised by presidential wannabes? Why are so many candidates jumping into the race with zero chance of ever winning even one primary? What kind of silly popularity contest is that? How about reporting on ideas of substance that could bring some relief to the poor and working poor? It's all rather sad to watch.
3
@Observer: It appears that running for president is a good way of making money. And if you think it's sad to watch, try living here.
1
I agree with most of this, except Trump is not at odds with Davos in any way... he’s their baby.
3
It will be a mistake for democrats to think they can win with a candidate who is the least objectionable. Biden will be an arranged marriage. We need a love affair to get out the vote and to capture people's passion about our future.
3
Focus! Winning in 2020 comes down to who wins PA, MI and WI. If the Democrats win back those 3 states, and hold all the other states that Clinton won in 2016, they win the 2020 election. Focus! Biden is the credible, down-to-earth candidate who can win those 3 states. Can we believe that any other of the 20+ candidates can do that? Despite Roger's "Davos Democrats" tag, Biden is not a liberal elitist and can reach and regain voters who went to Trump in 2016. Put a VP nominee on the Biden ticket who will help galvanize progressive, youth and minority voters, but never take your eyes off the ball game which means winning PA, MI and WI.
1
Not quite.
I agree that Joe Biden is not the best candidate to take on Trump. I also agree that his, Biden’s, characterization of Trump as an aberration is misconceived. But the main driver of Trump’s rise isn’t revolt against “the party of Davos;” it’s something much more deeply rooted in American life and history: white supremacy with a Bible-infused brand of Jim Crow racism.
2
The media has positioned Joe Biden as the centrist answer to solve the "Middle America Problem." The truth is that Joe Biden, given the chance, bumbles into troublesome situations where other seasoned pols know better. He's entered the race. Now let him open his mouth and he'll tumble down the polls. Happens every time with Biden.
An actor who's become so good at playing a part he's forgotten what it takes to play a human being. Anita Hill thing? No moral compass then and still hasn't figured it out. Looking for economic equality? Blue Collar Joe's son Hunter makes the Clintons look humble by comparison, and Joe just keeps on giving him the 1%'s million dollar cover-up love. (Not to mention Joe's "I wholly support son Hunter for cheating on his wife with my other dead son's widow 'cause, ya know, it's love." Oh, Hunter and Beau's widow conveniently split up just before Joe's entrance into the race since that might have...been a little messy answering to the press about that. Remember, it was "family concerns" that kept Joe from entering the race earlier.)
For those who have known Joe Biden for much of his public life, he's left a record of miss-steps, mistakes and missed opportunities to really stand up and Do The Right Thing.
1
Republicans are certainly nationalistic, but it is the democrats who are most fearful of where the world is headed.
"laziness has hurt the liberal center a lot over the past decade."
Let's say it again...all of the examples given of European leaders have one thing in common...less immigration. This is what Trump won on and what he will win on. The democrats are too lazy or afraid to anger the fringe left to come up with a policy. They do this at their peril and ours.
1
Does Biden’s mere “regular” presence at the gilded Davos means that he has abandoned a solid lifetime record of concern for and efforts made on behalf of the working and middle classes of this country? If you get the chance to enter the plutocratic inner sanctums to find out what their thinking actually is that is smart intelligence gathering, not a sellout to the .1 percenters. And as for that accompanying photo of Biden and Xi of China, isn’t it similarly always better to meet and know your adversaries, developing relationships with them? A “pillar of the ancient regime”?? The columnist doth protest and exaggerate too much!
Biden's position that trump is a mere aberration and the Republicans in Congress are not part of the problem (as reported by NYT this morning) is sorely disappointing and unrealistic. I now don't see how I can vote for him in a primary.
3
Not only did Trump claim in advance that the Bush-Obama-Biden style Global Elitists and their China policies were killing American jobs and communities, he has now proven it with his anti-Globalist/China policies and the surging economy.
With Obama and Biden, we got jobs at Walmart which they described as the "New Normal". Trump will constantly remind voters of this Obama-Biden "New Normal" when he goes after Biden in case they may have forgotten.
I’m no Biden fan.
But, looking at the Economist-YouGov poll (April 27-30), I understand exactly where he leads the candidate I prefer - and who I will vote for in the primary (Warren).
Basically, if you’re white, male, over 45 years old, make between $50-100K, and live in Central and South Regions - you’re FAR more likely to prefer Biden than Warren (don’t have the cross-tabs, so I’m not picking the intersection of these categories).
I think the task for Warren is defined: she needs a policy that clearly benefits that population (even though she fought Obama Biden on their foreign-policy based Trade positions)
I’ve no doubt she’s already on it. She’s the one candidate who’s actually thought through the problems right to the solution - not just stopping at a catchy slogan or waving arms furiously...
One can only hope there’s some strategy behind Biden ignoring the threat from China. that will play off very poorly vis-a-vis Trump attacking China, and the manufacturing jobs lost.
Could it be that Biden is readying for his “China, if you’re listening...” moment?
That would be hilarious... and reduce 2020 to a farce - like WWE.
1
@Patrician
Warren is my senator and I love her as a senator, and have even contributed to her campaign, but I didn’t want her to run for president for two reasons. One is that she’s too liberal for a general election and Republicans would chew her up. Second is that about half of the people I know - in Massachusetts - say they can’t stand her. She annoys them. This may sound superficial, but she doesn’t need more policies. She’s brilliant. We get it. She needs to learn to relax and smile because presentation matters.
@Chris
The voters will decide in the primaries.
We’ll see then whether this likability argument was real, media bias, or a political hit job.
Every one who attends Warren’s town halls finds her extremely likable.
@Chris
Wow. You sure don't know the same people I know. I love that she hectors and lectures because she actually makes sense. She's not trying to win a popularity contest. Most people I know find her refreshing.
Trump will win in a landslide even with the elite media against him.
Columns by Roger Cohen don't usually fall apart. This is the rare one that sputters coming out of the gate and doesn't make it to the finish line because of one small detail: Cohen says Trump listens and listens better than Clinton.
That's gob-smacking stuff. No one who's watched Trump over the years or has read any of the accounts given by casualties who once served him would use listen and Trump in the same sentence. By all accounts he has a mouth, which does his thinking for him and is also his favorite weapon of choice. No one, but no one, would attest to Trump's ears functioning in any way except to hear his own voice and the fawning praise lavished on him by his toadies.
Cohen betrays the same mistake made by other people in the media when they first started covering him. They thought beneath the hair gel and fake tan there was a sentient being with a staged persona waiting to bust out.
They've since learned that what you see with Trump is actually a lot less than you get. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, California, there's no there there.
If you can't get Trump right, how do you get Biden right?
2
It seems that the billionaires have looked at the wealth of China and decided "if you can't beat em--join em."
Biden and Hillary are speaking positively about China, and Biden's son Hunter seems to have thrown in his lot with a Chinese Bank. You can't make this stuff up--our military is up in arms over the South China sea, while Apple abides by Chinese restrictions in order to gain entrance to their huge market.
I realize that you can't blame China for our own corporations' outsourcing our jobs, but is this a new day of cashing in on their Belt & Road expansion?
2
I don't think we yet know who can beat Trump. In a 2016 it would have been Bernie. We won't know for another 6 months at least. The creepy Biden narrative will be hard to shake.
Is it so incomprehensible that you mention racism as playing a role in Trump and the right's rise? Do you really think it's only resentment of the elites and economic hardship? Why do so many journalists have such difficulty acknowledging the racism of the American public?
2
The winning formula is:
Make AMERICANS Great Again =
(Make America Great Again
- Coarseness
Respect for institutions
Income equality)
All the erudition and sophisticated analysis by Mr. Cohen here creates an excellent column. But the issues he notes will not affect the determination of the Democratic nominee or the presidential election.
This election turns on whether Bernie Bros will show up and vote for the actual Democratic nominee, even if it isn't their savior, or whether they will have the tantrum they had in 2016 that has cost this nation dearly.
Some ten per cent of Bernie voters voted for Trump rather than Hillary Clinton. (https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds) Thousands of others voted for Jill Stein or simply sat out the election.
They had to have their tantrum, and thus far, they appear primed for a repeat. And this is for only one reason -- race. Bernie voters are proportionately white. They knew they would never be targets of Trump's racist policies. They knew their families wouldn't be targeted by the white supremacists that Trump courted and still coddles. In short, they didn't think about how their reckless vote (or non-vote) would hurt many millions of other Americans. It was all about them.
The jury is still out whether this country can survive one term of Trump. It most certainly cannot survive two terms, at least the America that most of us grew up in. America after Trump will be known as an ugly, ignorant, racist backwater. And Bernie voters are just as responsible for this as are Trump voters.
3
Seriously? Elizabeth Warren is better positioned to win the critical states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania ( his original home state ) than Biden? The working white man who abandoned Hillary in 2016 will see the light and vote for a Harvard Law professor this time?
Biden has his flaws but he is the sole Democrat able to re-gain the Rust Belt’s electoral votes this time.
2
@Jim A. Maybe working white males prefer Harvard law professors to Yale law professors.
1
The real story from 2016 is that Russia manipulated White Americans and White Brits to vote for their candidate/Brexit by tapping into Whites' racism, misogyny and xenophobia. We know who voted for Trump (e.g., White Americans) and Brexit (older White Brits). Why no mention of the fact that this international band of nationalists appeals to Whites/Europeans fear of becoming the minority in a national and global sense?
As a clueless White man, Biden can't address this issue. If someone like Harris or Warren wins the nominee, they will turn of White Americans like Hillary Clinton did when she rightfully called out White Americans for their racism and implicit bias. What is the solution?
1
I think the main reason Trump won was because he just lied and told people what they wanted to hear. “We will build a beautiful wall on our southern border and Mexico will pay for it.” “I will bring manufacturing jobs back.” Need I go on?
5
Joe Biden could tap into some of Trump's latent populist support with his ties to the "meritocracy" a concept that is floated so much by pundits within the mainstream media. Supporting the highly skilled electricians, the highly trained firefighters & other practitioners of vocations that haven't been outsourced or automated, along with the corporate tycoons, who've "proven" their placement at the top of the economic pyramid, either through intellect or cunning mettle, can provide a populist edge with a public who've known nothing else.
Calling the leftists losers & neer-do-wells has succeeded mightily here in the USA. Reagan rode that steed to victory in 1980. Biden could surprise with a rebranding, incorporating New Deal principles with capitalistic support to overwhelm at the polls.
It would behoove Bernie & Elizabeth to declare a paired ticket in 2020, to fight the power, president & veep, in either order. The empty suits behind them can look for gainful employment.
EINOs: Elite In Name Only. This is the entire problem. No more than 10,000 people decide of the fate of the USA, the West, Civilization, eight billions, and even the fate of the biosphere. Who are these experts in heist? Who are these gods? Mostly a self-nominated elite. OK, not all from the same place: after all, Putin was nominated by the KGB, and Xi Jinping is the son of Xi Zhongxun, nominated by the Politburo.
Yet certainly China's elite became part of global plutocracy. Here is an example: corrupt armies ransacked Congo for rare earths enabling China to make phones for Apple, which “optimized” its own taxes into quasi-nothingness, by a combination of Caribbean tax havens and an EU-illegal deal with Ireland.
It is this global plutocracy which rules the world. It talks one way… precisely to be able to act the opposite. Biden is the centerfold of this, even more than the transparent Obama, and the blatant Clinton. In the 1990s, time and time again, Biden fostered the plutocratic coup against civilization, the crux being the destruction of the Banking Act of 1933, thus giving free reins to the world financial plutocracy.
All is tied up: Obama fostered a fracking rampage thus the US produces twice more fossil fuels than Russia or Saudis, poisoning Earth… But 1% of US CO2 is from US subsidized private jets.
Only one way out: as the Roman Republic did. Put an ABSOLUTE limit on wealth. As Warren suggests to do (de facto). Warren's revolution can defeat Trump's revolt.
1
Trump got out there and listened? Come on! He’s incapable of listening.
5
I agree with almost everything here, Mr. Cohen, except your willingness to be generous to Donald Trump. You say, “his brilliance...” and “he listened” while Hillary Clinton did not. The pillars of Trump’s presidency were hewn by Stephen Bannon. He was the architect of the broken-bottles-on-the-right wing’s laboratory’s floor. Trump just came along and won the lottery with a ticket that someone else gave him.
Trump has no sense of history. He couldn’t precisely say when Europe took the hard-right turn off the paved road and took the dirt track through the snake-strewn bushes. He’s the tail that wagged the nationalist dog—here and elsewhere. He didn’t create the hate—that was always there; he just gave it a rich man’s sheen—like a guy who wears one suit every day because it’s all he’s got.
Joseph Biden is running uphill after Trump—and will never catch him. Why? Because he can’t connect with those who hate. They’re all Donald Trump’s. They don’t want anyone else.
1
Obviously Joe Biden is a Chinese spy whose mission is to stop Trump. The FISA court should authorize wiretapping his entire campaign right away.
I won't be voting for Biden if he wants to go towards the: "Globalist agenda"
1
Joe Biden's time has past. The Republican party, as represented by DT, is no longer the party it has been for the last fifty years, neither are our politics. For years there has been talk of a third party, as the Republicans and Democrats abandoned the Center. We now have an extreme, Republicans so far right and Democrats moving so far left that it seems that we may have a revolution if either party is elected. DT represents the extreme right wing that was a Republican party. Any Democratic candidate must be capable of running against both DT and the Republican party.Joe Biden doesn't seem to be that person. DT will make this a rough and tumble election.
I agree with your thesis--Trump is an expression of
generalized antagonism toward "global elites" who seemingly wield power over the rest of us. But I see the antagonism as being quite understandable. It seems axiomatic that the further the seat of government is from the populace it governs, the greater the alienation, the lesser the popular control. The centralization of power within our borders has created a militaristic international bully and a surveillance state at home that secretly monitors its own citizens as if they were potential enemies.
It would be an obvious improvement in the American political system if power were taken from the central government (and from the "global elite") and returned to state and local governments, where the people are more closely connected to their governments and exercise more control.
Excellent analysis. It's a real keeper.
4
Biden represents politics as usual. I like many people are fed up with politics as usual. He cannot defeat Trump.
The Democrats no longer stand for the working person. The Republican party has already abdicated any values they one time stood for. Our bi-party system no longer works. We need a political system with more political parties in all of the legislative halls of our country.
We need choices, not the chosen.
5
Don’t forget and it is important.
Trump lost the popular vote. By 3.5 million. That a lot. So, the majority of Americans did not want him to be the president.
That IS important.
5
@Denise
Not quite. More stayed home or voted other than Clinton or Trump than voted for them. Some 100 million or so. So, the majority of Americans wanted neither of them. This IS important.
1
@Denise Any half-decent candidate would have done better than 3% over Trump.
Apparently, it was a challenge for the Democrats to find such a candidate.
2
@Jim
Let alone one with the intelligence to understand how the EC worked and plan a campaign accordingly.
The great irony that so many people miss is that Hillary's Electoral College defeat in the swing states was not due to disaffected white, working class voters, whom the media loves to obsess on, but in fact resulted from the polar opposite reason, because she could not duplicate the vaunted Obama Coalition of urban blacks and minorities.
Specifically, Hillary lost the (Electoral College) election due to low voter turnout in Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee. Had the voter turnout in those three cities simply equaled the turnout in 2012, she would have easily won PA, MI and WI.
In her defense, there was the confusion of the Philly transit strike, the lack of early voting in PA and MI, which negated her organizational advantage and, as we now painfully know, the Russian GRU social media machine heavily targeted the black vote in swing states in order to depress turnout.
But in any event the message is clear. No Democrat can win without somehow replicating the Obama Coalition's success in generating a large enough urban turnout in the electoral swing states to offset the rural vote in those states.
This is the path to the Electoral College victory in 2020.
8
@John M
"low voter turnout" in three cities. That does not mean that they would have voted for Clinton if they had bothered to vote. It also does not mean that they will bother to vote for Biden if he is nominated. I know I won't, and I am a registered Democrat and live in Michigan.
"...the network of elites whose economic and cultural prescriptions came to be seen by myriad voters across the United States and Europe as camouflage for a self-serving heist."
This is really well put. I would suggest that Eric Cantor going down was the first manifestation of this.
But we should remember that Hillary beat Donald in '16, by a lot. Her Davos-ishness is the thing I like the least about her, but if true, left-Dem policies were ever given a real chance and not subjected to the right-wing sewer blast at every turn, people might actually see govt as a positive factor in their lives.
This the heart of the right-wing agenda. Use any means necessary - populism, racism, demagoguery - to prevent people from realizing that we are all, in fact in in this together, and that the govt can help, directly where appropriate (e.g., health care, basic education) and indirectly elsewhere (e.g., green energy research).
3
Finally a pundit recognizes the Trump voters were always there and their numbers increased with the 2008 recession that was created by the Davos people. Even though they created the pain none of them felt it or were punished for their sins. The rest of us bore the brunt of their greed and watched their golden parachutes while we watched our homes foreclosed and retirement dreams trashed.
So They were not created by Trump or FOX. Both simply recognized their presence offered the stories and solutions that they wanted.
I deeply wished Biden had not entered the race but he does provide a focus to attack and to put forth real progressive policies as Sanders already has.
4
Revolutions are dramatic changes. They could be cultural, social, geographical, technological, and of course, violent.
When was the last time we had one in this country?
Most of what people call revolutions are really movements, if that. So there’s metoo, occupy Wall Street, black lives matter, civil rights, Green, anti-war, anti-nukes, pro-life, pro-choice - and many more. How many of those have resulted in real change? Some, but not many. And it takes a long time.
Yes, over the decades, woman, minorities and gays have more rights. But I wouldn’t describe it as revolutionary (unless you compare today with a century ago).
In my lifetime (I was born in the 1960s) the biggest revolution has been technological: we can instantly communicate with each other almost anytime, anything and anywhere. That’s real change and it happened so fast.
So maybe it’s a bit of narcissism and wishful thinking that we view ourselves today, in the “era of Trump,” as the agents of real change?
Joe Biden has a good chance of beating Trump but he must align his policies with the center-left - not with the center nor far left. The center-left can attract voters who care about threats arising from excessive globalization and an inclusive form of populism. The center is not where the 2020 battle will be won. It was where the 2016 battle was lost. The center is a great place to be if all Biden wants is to win the popular vote. Trump is not interested in the popular vote. His strategy is focused solely on winning the electoral college vote. Biden, if nominated, should share the same goal.
5
In 2016, it has been Trump, not Hillary, who got the majority of votes of those earning more than $100,000 a year, whereas those earning less voted for Hillary.
So no, to imagine that Trump's message (which indeed isn't his, but that of Fox News) somehow touched people who were on the losing end of the "globalization", is wrong. It's the "haves" who were afraid to lose their wealth, AND who were male AND white AND less-educated (= less able to fact-check Fox News' constant barrage of fake news) who voted for him.
Needless to add, moreover, that it's Hillary who won the popular vote, and by a whopping 3 million votes, and that today it's Joe Biden who's the uncontested front-runner in the Democratic party.
So no, I don't think think that Biden somehow represents "the party of Davos" in the eyes of the lower social classes - and obviously, he doesn't at all in real life either.
And no, Trump didn't "listen better than Hillary". As Trevor Noah just remembered, Trump LIED better than Hillary - and than any other GOP primary candidate. His main difference with Biden and Hillary is that he constantly distorts the truth (about his own record, that of others, and the state of the union), and massively cultivates racism (in itself an utterly false narrative).
If you can't see that the GOP, Brexit politicians etc. can only win when they lie, and imagine that somehow they reflect a pre-existing condition within the electorate, you're missing the essence of what's going on here.
6
Mr. Cohen gets part of this right and another terribly wrong. The rebellion is real and deep and against Davos and the global elite. But what he gets wrong is fear and nationalism are not the drivers. Rather people value their nations and recognize a strong prosperous nation provides economic stability and a good life. People see how globalism works in the EU, with unelected bureaucrats regulating and controlling your life from the way you make a living, build wealth, access healthcare, etc. The EU is a stagnant economy that has a high un and underemployed population and lacks innovation. They see uncontrolled immigration into their countries destroying their economy and ripping apart the social fabric and rightly so. Controlled immigration at a reasonable scale is welcomed. And there is justifiable anger that any objection to uncontrolled immigration is shouted down as racist. Trade deals, as you acknowledge, have transferred good manufacturing and other semi-skilled labor out of the US to China and your front runner Biden, can’t figure that out. The finger prints of the Davos class are all over these deals. Guess what, illegal immigration and trade deals gutted the middle class and the $15 minimum wage will not bring it back. Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation and trade deal stance have stimulated the US economy into a juggernaut, unemployment is at historic lows and wages are increasing. His populism is a success, despite the media’s denial, Trump 2020
3
Exactly right, Biden is suitable for the present zeitgeist and it would be grave strategic mistake to keep the focus on him for much longer.
4
I would simply add, Biden’s remarks about China not being an economic threat to us, that, in and of itself, should disqualify him as a presidential candidate. Our political system is almost wholly corrupt, trump is merely the symptom not the disease. Until we find a way to get big money out of politics, we’ll almost certainly end up with an even more dangerous leader, one who will not only be evil, but highly competent in imposing their will upon the people.
Why as Americans are we so afraid of transformative change?
14
@Fred
The Establishment works to make us afraid because they benefit from the status quo.
But the Establishment is not going to win, there are more of us!
2
@Fred
Americans are not afraid of transformative change. Trump is transformative! To be sure, he is the culmination of a process that includes Nixon, Cheney/Bush, McConnell, the rise of the tea party and it's takeover of congress, etc. -- i.e., not all transformations are positive. Some are simply destructive.
Whether the state of affairs into which the U.S. has fallen is an aberration or a lasting culmination signaling the demise of the country remains to be shown -- the 2002 election could speak historical volumes.
1
@HW
Sorry -- I meant 2020 (typo). My bad!
FDR was a political insider who had a lot of rich Republican friends, and he did OK.
3
By seventh grade, Joe was attending a middle class Catholic school in Delaware. Next he went to Archmere Academy School for Boys, definately not "working class." his father was a salesman at a Chevy dealership, which in the mid-fifties was a fairly remunerative job. The Bidens lived in a mid-market suburb. I post this not as an attack upon Joe or his story, but for accuracy's sake.
We were acquainted at this time, and I can say that Joe had a prosperous middle-class youth, and a high-end education.
15
Dear Mr. Cohen:
When I heard Biden announced he was running I thought good, a decent guy who could bring the sides together. After reading your opinion column I was slightly ashamed of myself, I realized a nod to Biden was a cop out. Things have changed. We got decency with President Obama, we didn't get results. The most enduring legacy of Trump after he goes to jail will be his willingness to disrupt the status quo, including the Democratic Party. It's time for a non Biden to rearrange the pieces in favor of us, regular citizens with paychecks, kids in school, savings accounts, medical bills and aging parents. There will be plenty left over for the super rich, they just can't have it all. We need a fighter, sorry it ain't you Joe.
24
I don't think the average voter pays any attention to Davos or even understands what it represents. I think this article is way over the heads of the people depicted as starting a revolution. In general, people do see inequity, and know that for as hard as they work they should have more money, healthcare and security. And how can we punish anyone for attending something so our views can be heard there? This article seems to be a clever construct of a reality that just exists in a very few people's minds.
2
@mouseone
Agree, the average voter may not "know" Davos, but they do have a sense of the global elites, and certainly a sense of the entitled Establishment.
More and more people sense the unfairness and struggle of ordinary life in the US.
The American dream is dead.
The huge income/wealth inequality is there for all to see.
Bold ideas and vision and leadership are needed.
Bernie has that Biden does not.
Bernie also has incredible decency and integrity.
Unbelievable that Boomer & older Democrats are eager to line up for the same type of "deserving" old guard candidate that got us into this mess in the first place. We need CHANGE and those of us that are still out there working and trying to get ahead see Bernie Sanders as the only logical choice. There is nothing about this man that inspires or gives any sort of hope - he's the same ol' thing and what VP sits on the bench for years then decides to come out and run? What an absolute disaster if this useless tool of the Democrat party gets the nomination.
16
“Such listening is critical. Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton.”
This is purely opinion. Moreover, it is a false premise. The assumption that there is a magical combination of policy positions that would appeal to all voters is wrong.
Hillary Clinton won more votes than anyone not named Barrack Obama, ever. She did so after two terms of a Democratic Presidency and with a foreign government actively working against her and for the other candidate, not to mention the timing of James Comey’s statements.
WE ARE GOING TO OVERCORRECT!
The hyper partisanship we are experiencing is real. People actually believe very different things. Some people honestly don’t feel that refugees deserve help if it means giving up any of their personal safety or resources. Listening to someone express that might lead one to say that person is “deplorable.”
Let’s stop acting like this is a function of political tactics and start treating it for what it is: a civil war of beliefs.
7
That being said, Joseph Biden is not at all the person we need. He lacks the creativity to understand both the foundational nuances and develop the new solutions needed to face our challenges. Only Elizabeth Warren appears to have the mind for the moment.
11
@E. Miller
He is "not at all the person we need"; he is also probably not the person he wants us to believe he is.
1
Good try by Roger Cohen to unravel this complex idealist ball of string, but things are never what they seem.
Was FDR an early Davos Democrat? His personal afflictions lifted him up enough to see beyond his privileged past to the ability to react to the sufferings of others in a powerful effective way. Perhaps Biden is no FDR, but perhaps he might surprise us and give us something much better than the self serving Trump. Generalizations tend to only limit possibilities. Let's take a breath and wait to see.
5
I wouldn't presume to predict ANYTHING thesae days. People, it seems, have gone a little wild. They will do anything- think anything-elect anybody- let themselves be ruled by anybody...
most people are just trying to stay alive and couldn't really care less who runs the world. Most people don't have time to worry about much more than getting by. They consciously or unconsciously know that they don't count for much of anything when it comes to world running and will vote like they are buying a lottery ticket.
7
I agree to some extent. But we aren't going to know enough to make an informed decision until Biden shows he understands our most serious problems and then articulates policy to address the daunting challenges we face over reducing income inequality, which includes improving health care and housing access, and saving the planet.
Yes, we need someone to restore good relations with our allies and return us to the rule of law. Those goals must be aligned with a vision of how government can finally tackle the realities that are killing us.
3
I don't think Biden will get the nomination.
At this early stage, people respond to surveys with name recognition.
After the debates, Biden will sink as he has done before.
11
I love and appreciate Roger Cohen’s work, but I disagree with him on this. I still feel like Trump was an aborration, an accidental president elected due to Russian interference, comey’s Idiotic letter, and the bizarre electoral college system. I have carefully followed Trump’s popularity rankings and I don’t believe that, at this stage, he can beat a generic democrat. Joe Biden is exactly that - a generic democrat and it seems like the Democratic Party is hungry for his candidacy. I know I am. BIDEN 2020!
3
Most people who voted for Trump neither know nor care about what Davos is or what happens there.
Trump is president because too many people thought it was impossible for a carnival barker reality show personality to defeat a former senator and Secretary of State, so they voted for a third party or voted for Trump in protest.
Remember: Trump is a minority president.
People on the pure left ought to understand that it is better to have a Clinton or a Biden in the White House than to have Trump. Witness the federal courts on ALL levels thanks to Mitch McConnell and his gang of GOP liars and thieves in the Senate.
When we think about 2020, we ought to also think about taking control of the Senate and holding the House of Representatives.
Further, how much of Trump's build the wall rhetoric and China as an existential threat talk is more of his white supremacy on parade?
5
Complete nonsense. It's been shown again and again that Trump voters don't resent rich people, much less know or care about Davos or whether Biden attends. In fact they admire wealthy people. Trump stokes fear, hatred of minorities and the perception that liberal politicians are unfairly giving away the farm to them. Democrats have not been at all tone deaf to the needs of the working class. They've been complaining about income inequality for years and it goes nowhere. They passed the AFC and were pilloried for it. The naked truth is that about 40% of the population see wonderful qualities in Trump. Whether someone like Biden can overcome that is doubtful.
4
@JaneDoe
Democrats have been complaining about income inequality only in the context of identity politics, not with respect to the general populace. If they had done that, we would be having Hillary Clinton for President now.
2
Most Trump voters are not working class. They are comfortably off. Think of the Fox news audience. These are mostly people who admire wealth and would like to join the Davos crowd.
Elizabeth Warren and Ocasio Cortez are the true anti-Davos politicians and they are despised by Trump voters.
7
Sorry folks, most people who voted for this conman Trump, don’t even know what “Davos” is.
Trump ran and won on bigotry, lies and hate, and a wink to wealthy GOP donors that the candy store would be open for business (and as we know plenty of help from Russia).
It’s really not any more complicated than that.
Hopefully truth, integrity and competence will win out next time. This I hope for the sake of the country I love.
12
"Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton." Trump the listener? Please. He saw an opportunity to acquire prestige, power, and wealth by exploiting millions of angry, hurt people. He did this by making them them angrier, by offering them (false) villains, and by playing the (false) savior.
8
I love reading the comments after insightful opinion pieces. I do. But in neither the piece nor the comments today is there a mention of the powerful African American voter. Obama mobilized the pride of the black voters. They are still there and will either vote for the party that considers them fully part of the American electorate, or they will revert to partly sitting it out like 2016 and the years before 2008.
5
So after reading the article It is obvious to me that their is no one thing that put trump into office. Except this, willful ignorance and laziness. Too lazy to find truth and to ignorant to believe the truth. All the people that I know who love trump do so because they are like him. They are bigots that believe what he says and admirer him for saying it. They are people who believe in cause and effect. Meaning the cause for manufacturing loss is only Chinas fault. They seem not to realize that China rise in manufacturing was in large part American firms and machines. They found someone to agree with them that it is all Chinas fault. Mr. Cohen seems to agree. As much as I hate elitism Davos is a critical part of Globalization. As much as Mr. Cohen does not seem to comprehend that money makes the world go round and trump followers think that we would be just fine selling to only our selves. People like Mr. Cohen want to push the fault of the declining middle class on others instead of where it belongs GREED. Greed made the unions that built this country crumble under the pressure of false cause. Elites convinced Americans that the reason for their products going up in price was because the union wanted too much money and benefits. They said it had nothing to do with the raises and golden parachutes for the elites. The other reason trump won the electoral college is because white middle American see too many give aways that do not apply to them because they earn too much.
2
What an odd argument. So, Biden is too elite? The vast majority of billionaire Republicans have been totally into that "ancien régime." It wasn't exactly a Democratic notion. Where did the Republican party go wrong? They became all about social issues like abortion. Meanwhile, the stance of the Trump family and other rich "conservatives" is nothing but hypocritical on that and other evangelical issues. Let's not forget that Donald, Ivanka and Jared were all registered Democrats before they were Republicans. The author is surely joking if he thinks there is a Trump economic revolution. Nope. Just a bunch of ridiculous tax cuts that have made the market overly exuberant. Don't take any idea that it is genius or permanent to the bank.
4
Trump didn't best Hillary Clinton at listening to anyone. He simply told people what they wanted to hear, offering empty promises and scapegoats. False hope and divisiveness are hardly commendable.
Trump isn't the candidate of anyone struggling. His own life is gaudy and filled with boasting of his Ivy League degree and wealth. His policies have been to favor the rich and deregulate financial institutions. Trump jeopardizes the vulnerable with his anti trade tirades. Donald doesn't support workers' protections. He even left people without paychecks from the shutdown over his border wall! Enough with the myth that Trump has any claim to working class voters. He's just a con artist.
2
I agree that Biden is not the answer. The DNC needs to keep neutral in this race, until the primary winner is chosen by the voters.
If Warren and Sanders stay on message, keep talking about how to solve the working class issues of everyday Americans, one of them should emerge as the candidate.
Trump showed us the way to disrupt the systems. We should look at the road map and beat him at his own game. Not by appealing
to crass and rude behavior, but by showing people the way to a better life by outlining solid proposals, backed up by evidence.
And the media needs to stop letting Trump suck up all the oxygen in the room. Why have none of them covered the fact that Trump actually is being challenged by Bill Weld, a former Governor and profile him and his ideas?
I think a lot of Trump voters of the past are disgusted with Trump. Enough to put a Democrat in the White House and the Senate.
Why voters ever thought that a supposed Billionaire of Trump's character would ever care about them, is beyond imagination.
Maybe it took disruption of this dangerous Administration to wake people up and educate them about how things actually get done, or not, in our Government.
I am going to bet on the American voter to have the intelligence and emotional intelligence to set our country on a better course.
8
Trump lost by almost three million votes. He's not an aberration, he's a liar, enabled by those who see him as representing a solution than a problem. Yes, a graft economy run by impervious oligarchs is wrong. It's also wrong even to hint that Trump will do anything but embolden and strengthen the oligarchs.
2
I think Biden will look very tired next to the ranting, raging, shrieking, arms-flailing Trump. I think the visual alone will be a. problem.
3
Roger, very smart piece, however i disagree w/ a fundamental underpinning, Biden cannot be Uncle Joe From Scranton AND the face of Davos. He may be a product of Davos, but fortunately and UNfortunately he isn't the face of it. Is he what we need next? Maybe not, but he could placehold, return a moral center and give us time to figure out what is next...?
The Chinese didn't "take" our industrial jobs, rather in the 80's and '90's, we sold them our industrial machinery and gave them those jobs. This is what we capitalists do, use every opportunity to make money by, for example, purchasing a declining industrial concern at a low price, shuttering it, laying off its workforce, stripping it of its valuable components, selling those off, counting the profits and moving on to do the same thing again, and again. It's the American Way. And for those workers insufficiently nimble to re-up their skill set, acquire new tools, jump to a new job in a different workforce, we say: "adapt or die". Are these people who have failed to adapt going to vote for the Party of Davos? Perhaps not, but they already vote Republican and Republicans were the ones who sold their jobs to China. Trump? A huckster who heard them, parroted their concerns, and then promised to do the impossible: bring back jobs to industries which for all intents and purposes no longer exist in America with sufficient critical mass. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Still, I would rather have a Democratic Party presidential candidate who gets it and understands it is time for all of us to move on and is sufficiently articulate to bring the non-adapters along for the ride. And that's not Joe Biden. Or Bernie Sanders.
1
To some extent, this story explains why candidates like Joe Biden are so clueless about what is happening in Latin America.
Joe Biden is a Catholic. To some extent his faith informs his politics. The Catholic hierarchy regards birth control as a sin and abortion as downright murder. Many of the poor in Latin America are Roman Catholics and follow church teachings on birth control.
Honduras had a population of about 2 million in 1960. Its population exploded to about 9.5 million now, more than quadrupling the population in 1960.
That is a population explosion. Honduras is not a wealthy country. Its citizens were mostly subsistence farmers.
In a separate article, the NY Times discusses violence in Honduras. The most obvious explanation for the violence is the high population growth.
Any coherent policy to fight illegal immigration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras should include providing family planning for free to all the citizens of these countries.
What would be the position of Joe Biden?
Some indication might be derived from a comment he made when visiting China as Vice President. He characterized China's one child policy as "repugnant."
The Roman Catholic position of denying access of Latin American poor to birth control has had devastating consequences, leading to violence in Latin America.
Joe Biden has had the wrong position on birth control in the past. Joe Biden would be one of the Democratic candidates who might be even worse than Trump.
5
@Jake Wagner
Finally, a realistic diagnosis of violence in Latin America, but population explosion will also explain the violence in Syria, the whole of the Middle East, and Africa —a basket case: climate, population explosion, 3000 different tribes speaking different languages. Free contraception, financing contraception research. Beautiful dreams for saving our planet, democracy and civilization.
Biden's time may be fading, but he's got creds to get us back to "normal". He could show that he's not a Davos throwback by picking a progressive -- but not too progressive -- VP. A woman like Amy Klobachar, Kirsten Gilibrand, maybe even a bold move like Kamla Harris as I doubt Eliz. Warren is going to want to play 2nd fiddle since she's too busy lecturing us from her professorial perch (though granted much of her policy positions have merit and should be considered).
We just want to win. And we Dems need to get back the Senate or it will all be for naught as Mitch and his lackeys will keep carrying water for the corporate elites while they sell their covert help the rich spin to all of the struggling workers in their states with divide and conquer, us versus them, rhetoric.
I truly wonder when a "New South" (and a good swathe of the West) will rise again and realize their leaders have sold them down the river with messages of fear against change.
As the ancient curse goes: "May you live in interesting times."
The GOP will denounce whom ever the Democrats nominate as a “socialist “. So we should not pretend we can nominate a centrist and win.
2
You are thinking about this all wrong. Trump has united the left and provided all the motivation the left could ever want or need. The dems could run coco the chimpanzee as a candidate and the turnout would be huge from the left.
The only question that matters here is as follows: who will be most effective at tapping into the potential division on the right? Tons of moderate republicans hate trump. They are dying to watch him go. But Bernie Sanders will unite them with true-blue #MAGA Trump-ites and he will be in the WH for another 4 years.
Biden is the perfect antidote. He will get all of the left and a high turnout on the left (because of Trump-hatred) and he will provide the perfect path of revolution for moderate centrist republicans. Period.
1
#P, I agree with one caveat. Joe Biden can bring back the working class formerly Democratic voters that were lost to this regime in 2016 but that will not be enough. With a moderately progressive woman as a running mate such as Kamala Harris, they would also draw out other constituencies that supported President Obama but sat out the 2016 election. In addition to running on the theme of bringing civility back to the political arena, it is critical to have a team that is also attractive to women, people of color, and younger voters across this nation.
I think this article is right on the mark. Biden has not changed with the times and is apparently not that observant, and certainly says stupid things. How is China not a competitor? And what of his botching of the
Anita Hill apology. I remember watching the AH hearings with angry white guys - Arlene Specter,etc. - attacking Hill, indicating it was so outrageous that she have anything to report that was not concert with how they planned the confirmation to go. Also, I don't see his above the fray, conciliatory approach working against a bullying opponent.
1
I don't think this column is entirely fair. When he was in the Senate his Republican colleagues used to sneer at Biden for not using his seat to enrich himself as they did. Taking the train home to Delaware every day does not represent the "Party of Davos." That said he is of another more honorable generation, a decent man locked in an election that will take more than decency to defeat an indecent incumbent.
3
Just another proof that populism on the left is indistinguishable from the populism of the right: the same narrow nationalism, appeal to xenophobia, and poisonous nostalgia. The “people” have their spokesmen: old white guys competing as to who can slam the Chinese harder. But who will speak for the party of Davos? Who will speak for the real elites - not those with money but those with education - who have built this new world? Sure, it’s not perfect - not by a long shot. So what is your alternative? What time do you want to go back to? The 1950s when millions were rotting in the gulags and Chinese peasants were eating corpses? Oh, but it was not in the US, so what do I care? This narrow-mindedness is exactly what globalism was supposed to change. It was supposed to teach people that we are all one, we all share the same planet, and the rise of China which brought uncounted millions out of poverty, is something to be celebrated, not feared. Clearly, the globalist project has failed in teaching basic empathy and understanding of the interconnected world. So go ahead, choose your poison: Trump or Bernie, populist on the right versus a populist on the left. At the end, you’ll end up in the same place: in the past, while the rest of the world is trying, however imperfectly, to build the future.
2
Kudos to Roger Cohen! Finally, somebody capable of speaking the truth and dealing with it!
If you want do defeat somebody, it’s not crucially important to understand his weaknesses.
It’s far more relevant to comprehend his strengths and your weakness.
By the way, the free press is not your ally or friend but just a threat to you. They work for their owners and the advertisers.
That’s why the free press is doing their best to divide you along the racial, class, gender, ethnic, sex, political and cultural lines. When you are divided, then you are weak and polarized, thus incapable to take the power away from the one percenters.
By the way, there is no white privilege. That’s just an urban legend, developed to hide the tragic consequences of the bad parenting.
How do I know that? I came here as a refugee from a country with 100% white population. What was our alleged privilege? An all-out bloody civil war?
Those talking about the white privilege obviously have never heard about the WWI or WWII…
1
Davos Democrats are the disease, Trump is just a symptom. Trying to push a candidate like Biden in this new era is a "hair of the dog (that bit you)" strategy that reveals a frightening degree of tone-deafness. I find it even more disturbing that anyone can think that trying to "win back" disaffected white working class voters who shifted to Trump in 2016 is the path for the party to take in the future (apparently, many do!). This is the establishment Democrat version of MAGA, thinking that the clock can be rolled back to the mid-20th century, and putting the same kind of people in charge of it who oversaw its prior demise...so that we can do it all over again? Sorry, this won't work, the Earth shattered, huge changes are amiss. Simply ousting Trump and putting grinning teeth in the Whitehouse is a terrible option, and I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that.
2
Biden will win the Democratic primary because seniors will vote for him and they're the only ones who vote in a primary. To win, Democrats will need a working-class magician and Biden is more of the same. Tim Ryan will try to be that person, but he's old-skool, too.
Reflecting back on the 2016 election it was no doubt that Hillary exposed the weaknesses in the Democratic Party. The last 20-years of Democratic policy has indeed neglected the middle class. But Republicans have been guilty too. Donald Trump tapped into that blue collar narrative and he has taken it to a new level and continues to court it with his rally antics. The 2017 tax cut benefited the wealthy and if you look at all the social programs it will affect down the road with these cuts you will see that this affects the middle class people he said it was meant to help. The rallies feature generally the same persons and group diversity up on the podium next to Trump holding signs that say “Blacks for Trump” and a older gentleman in a wheel chair with tubes up his nose wearing a MAGA hat with Trump and too cheers when Trump says “I love the uneducated people”!
2
A few weeks after Vice President Biden flew to China with his son, Hunter, his son’s private equity firm got a billion dollar loan from the Chinese government bank. A billion dollars! From the Chinese government!
Does the implications of this have to be pointed out? They don’t work for us. None of them.
8
I was prepared to hate this article, but only because I think disagreed with the word revolution.
I actually agree with the article. I tied it together with the other article on the front page of the Times that declares that Democrats can't find strong candidates to run for the Senate.
The reality is that the Davos Democrats can't really win anything. Most of their own party hates them as they have painted their way into a triangulated corner.
I am a progressive and I know, because the far reaches of my family are knee-jerk Republicans (emphasis on the jerk.)
However, when I talk to them in my most aggressive, two-fisted socialist ways, they agree with everything that I say.
As for calling anything Trump "a revolution," I would say that it is more like a tumble backwards into some really disgusting episodes in human history. But I won't trifle over that word when the substance of Mr. Cohens words are so correct.
5
I agree. Joe Biden represents nothing new. He is a creature from a very distant past. He speaks nothing to an enormous pool of young voters who desperately seek some hope and inspiration from their leadership in Washington.
It strikes me that Donald Trump did not win in 2016 so much as that the Democrats lost by default with a well-qualified but remote and haughty candidate. Joe Biden is a decent man and folksy to a fault, but he inspires the under-50 crowd as much as a tread-worn snow tire.
The Democratic Party has the opportunity to capture the imagination of a spirit-hungry nation in 2020. Let's see if the Dems blow it again.
3
This is the most cogent column that Cohen has written in a very long time. It appears that he is finally beginning to "get it." Extraordinary! Yet, he can't completely let go of those chestnuts that liberal warriors from another age carry around in their heads. "The revolution is still in the top of its first inning. It is . . . driven by a resurgence of those unhappy twins: fear and nationalism." No, Mr. Cohen, it is driven by anger and a desire to put right some lies that were sold to people as beneficial to them, such as allowing China to become the recipient of jobs shipped from the United States (it would make us all richer, we were told) and the impunity of the American financial class from any punishment for wrecking (and profiting from wrecking) the U.S. economy. If pursuing a less "globalist" (i.e., a more "nationalist") approach will fix these, so be it. One can only hope that the person leading this necessary change will be a Sanders, Warren, or some other responsible person rather than the pathetic child we have now in the White House, old, worn-out Uncle Joe.
@Lotzapappa I meant to say: "or old, worn-out Uncle Joe."
This is correct as far as it goes but is only half of the story. Biden is also the right candidate if you think that Trumpism among the Republican political class is a phase that will pass. If, in the other hand, you believe that the cynicism, obstructionism, dishonesty, and lawlessness of the Republican Party is here to stay, that Trump is merely a symptom of that party’s 30-year rot, then the concept of centrism must be regarded as dead.
Weak Democrats in the House wringing their hands about how to respond Barr’s middle finger still won’t accept the reality of the times we are living in. The next Democratic presidential nominee must understand that the Republican Party is an existential threat to the nation. Waxing about the lost days of cooperation and common purpose is a loser’s strategy. Like it or not, this is war. Our nominee must be prepared to fight it.
3
I totally agree with this. In fact, this column expresses what I was feeling and sensing but couldn’t quite put into words. Macron, though, is not fooling anyone: He seems to be putting lipstick on the proverbial pig. He’s still a Davos elite, and I don’t think the Yellow Jackets are fooled by him. He just doesn’t get it, just like Biden. I also came from working class and joined the elite via education (not wealth) - I can see that most of the “Davos types” live in a fairly land. Bernie gets it. Elizabeth gets it. Stacy Abrams gets it. The rest? Not so much. They just want to join the Davos elite. The country “gets it” but needs to stifle negative urges at the ballot box by electing one of the few who “gets it.” My ideal ticket? Warren/Abrams. That would really “get it.”
3
If Democrats don’t put up their change candidate, I think we are ripe for an independent to win the White House. People are fed up!
1
Mr. Cohen, wrote the things we do not want to hear, but they are also the truth, dislike Trump yes, but Biden or Sanders are not the one going to bit Trump, as Mr.Cohen wrote , look to Europe, all hard right wing, and Trump policy , l do not like him or his policy, but Democrat will not come with a fresh name and face , we will have 4 more year Trump is he a good American NO,is he a good leader NO. is he good for allies NO, is he good for middle class NO, is he good for blacks NO, so why he is going to win again, because nobody coming with a better ideas and policies
First, there was the Tripartite Commission . Then there was the Bohemian Club's retreat at the Grove . Now there is the latest bugaboo of a certain sliver of progressive opinion : the"party of Davos" . As Rachel Maddow would most ably would put it ; "Bull Hicky !"
Clearly, Roger Cohen has not consulted the list of attendees at the Davos Economic forum with all the attention it deserves . It is the one of the best places in the world for NGO's to meet and influence the very people in the world who, whether we like it or not, have the power, political and economic, to effectuate needed societal changes .
Are there plutocrats in Davos ? of course, there are . But the forum is also attended by some of the world's leading philanthropists, representatives of regions threatened by climate change, campaigners against human servitude and so many more .
I also wish, as others have noted, that Mr Cohen hadn't quoted Vice President Biden completely out of context for his remark on China . That seemed to be a pretty cheap shot from an otherwise thoughtful columnist .
Mr. Buttigieg is the one to beat Mr. Trump, because he is not compromised by a lot of previous political baggage. Furthermore he is unpredictable and therefore difficult to fight for Mr. Trump. Mrs. Warren and Mr. Sanders are easy to trash - "socialists that want to make the country Venezuela" and Mr. Biden will engage in mud wrestling with Mr. Trump. As much as I respect Biden, he will not win that fight because he is not dirty enough.
1
Excellent piece. Praising and burying Biden in the same column. Neat.
1
Uncle Joe plays the glad handing, blue collar regular fella, but behind closed doors, he represents the bought and paid for wing of the Democratic Party.
If the Democrats are foolish enough to choose Biden as their standard bearer, they will turn what should be a Democratic blowout into a squeaker... and I’m not sure who will win.
I can’t say it better than this... “For all his Scranton blue-collar beginnings, Biden will be pilloried as a faithful servant of the Party of Davos that secured impunity for the financiers behind the 2008 meltdown, a heady growth in inequality, China appeasement and the arrogance of money-wooed Democrats estranged from their working-class constituency.”
4
Watching television, I saw Biden make what was probably the classiest gesture that I have ever seen from a politician. It was many years ago, on the MacNeil/Leher Newshour.
Jim Lehrer was in his TV studio, interviewing Biden and Richard Lugar, who were sitting right next to each other, in a studio on Capitol Hill.
Depending on which party controlled the Senate, one would be the Chairman, and the other, the ranking member, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
During the interview Biden became particularly animated, and pointing at Lugar, said... "This guy knows more about foreign policy than anyone else among the 535 of us ( Congress ), and that includes me"
Lehrer smiled, and Lugar, who was gravitas incarnate, beamed like a kid on Christmas morning.
Lugar, who was a giant in the Senate, and a mentor to the new Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, just died last week, which made me remember this.
Mr. Cohen, you are right. Joe Biden can't win anything. He's lost in a past of 50 years ago. He's slow. He comes across as not particularly smart and he's like a dotty uncle no one really wants around because he makes them uncomfortable.
But you are dead wrong about Donald Trump. It should be clear to anyone with eyes, the man has no plan for anything other than keeping the cheering crowds coming. He loves the attention so he says whatever these meat monger want to hear. He tells them no more rove v wade, stack the courts with conservative completely unqualified judges, guns, guns guns...
It's a never ending feast for the people who can't think from point A to point B and want their single issue to be front and center.
And meanwhile in the background with the aid of the GOP big business is raping the planet.
We are China. The manufacturing that has moved to China is backed by American companies... yet somehow that story just never quite gets told.
1
The House was flipped by centrist Democrats. Stop getting mesmerized by the FEW elected Democratic leftists, including my dear AOC from my old Bronx neighborhood. They have good ideas but the electoral map is against them. You can't just ride roughshod over middle America.
You missed one thing: Trump is going to run on a record in 2020. It will be interesting to see how he defends Steve Mnuchin-Foreclosure King, Wilbur Ross-Grifter Extraordinaire, and Betsy DeVos-Billionairess Personified, on the campaign trail while still claiming to be the voice of the forgotten millions.
1
“...a middle course between Wall Street and Main Street...”
Why should it be a ‘middle’ course? We, the people, deserve more than the bankers.
“Trump’s revolution “???
The words more applicable are Devolution and Regression.
The republicans who support trump somehow believe that he is not the personification or the Greedy One Percent, but that is ALL he is. And America is in shambles from his actions.
I will take Joe Biden, his competence and willingness to look or fo ALL Americans over trump’s false populist lies.
1
There are 20 candidates for the Democratic nomination. My criteria throughout this primary season are electability and policies. I'm not willing to support any of them until I hear what they propose but equally critically, evaluate their chances vis a vis this terrible man, Mr. Trump.
1
Teresa May Tories party lost 1300 seats at local elections on Thursday. This is the Conservatives party who in the past has supported tax cuts for the wealthy-the trickle down way to poverty for the working people. These are the people who for the life of them allowed Brexit vote to occur and now cannot get this stupidest of deals done.
Trump has done absolutely nothing for the labor. He continues to ride the coattails of an economy that his arch enemy fought bitterly for to pull it out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, done without a single Republican in Congress help. Trump does not listen to anyone ever. He makes idiotic decisions 24/7/
365 that have been blocked, secretly squashed or failed spectacularly. His demented decisions included the catastrophically expensive immigration/Southern border fiasco where he wants another 4.5 billion more to fix lava hot mess he and his administration created. His tariffs alone are costing Americans 1.6 billion per day! He has buried farmers so deep in debt that they will never see the light of day again. Overseas markets that they built over last 30-40 years he destroyed in a matter of months. Yesterday, Trump called Putin, talked for over an hour on his Russian hoax which got his elected and never told Putin to stay out of the 2020 election. Why? Because he wants this foreign adversary's help in 2020 and they will provide it. Trump's their tool now. This article was folly and just filled up space.
1
Trump is not smart enough to understand the problems facing America let alone solve the problems. His strength lies in his ability to incite bias against people of different religions and skin color. So his main effort as president is to keep such people out of the country. Nor is Joe Biden exactly a rocket scientist. What we need is a young president with a sharp mind but it is unlikely that we will get one.
I don't understand how Biden can finally exit the gates into this race and start out with ridiculous statements about China. I mean, what has he been thinking about all this time?
I do agree about the Chinese people not being bad folks. That's fine. They're people just like us. But, "they're not competition?" Seriously? Our exceptionalism is a figment of our own imaginations. Other cultures can be exceptional also, and I think China's meteoric economic rise, sometimes at our expense, shows a single-mindedness and brilliance on their part that's impressive. We failed to keep them in check for one simple reason: because we're just a bunch of greedy vulture capitalists who started champing at the bit during the Bill Clinton years to go global ASAP.
What was supposed to happen with globalization, which the Davos clan never figured out, is that everyone was supposed to benefit. The sweatshop-type jobs were supposed to go to China so children could stop starving there, while Americans were supposed to be retrained for better-paying jobs in our shiny new skilled labor and knowledge based economy.
That didn't happen due to our own greed--including Donald Trump and his China-made ties and menswear. Meanwhile he grifted Americans with Trump University nonsense while studiously avoiding paying any taxes whatsoever. He's just as big a hypocrite as the rest of the champagne glass clickers at Davos.
Biden still doesn't get it, and because of that he will not win.
3
"I don’t think Trump is an aberration. On the contrary, he’s the face, however duplicitous, of a revolution against the Party of Davos,..."
Nope. Trump is the face of latent and overt racism in the U.S. It surfaces from time to time.
2
I don’t care if Biden isn’t the most ideologically pure democratic candidate. If he has the best chance to help us get rid of Trump, I will support him.
3
On policy, and on her record of fighting for ordinary working Americans, Elizabeth Warren’s the one. The main criticisms I have heard of her are that her voice is grating, and then there that’s whole DNA thing, pushed by the Tweeter in Chief. If Americans let misogyny and racism dictate their ballot choice we are truly lost.
Every person from very poor to very rich can and should be held to a standard of morality that values concern for others well being, truth telling, respect for differing ideas and religious beliefs and on and on. It’s easy to say we have Trump because of the resentment of the less well off of the Davos wealthy and what they represent. But I’m not willing to give anyone a pass who voted for Trump because they thought it was funny to make a crude, lying, bully President of the United States. Yes we have a problem of inequality, but that does not excuse throwing away all rational thought. So the wealthy and the poor are now united in making a joke out of the values that have in the past served us well ( but not perfectly). It will take two or three Presidencies to clean up the slime Trump will leave behind.
1
Way to sabotage the one Democratic candidate capable of winning blue-collar, union voters back from Trump. What typifies "lazy thinking" isn't panic over China but Cohen's eagerness to lump Biden in with the Clintons as typical "Davos servants" when Biden's lodestar has always been the restoration of America's middle class. Far from an embodiment "the ancien régime" (pretentious!), Biden is a passionate moderate in the same mold as the president under which he served. Please let's not allow such tendentious claptrap to damage our best chance of beating the incumbent on his own turf.
3
Hopefully this is the last boomer election, we all need to move forward and address the world as it is and not how the locust generation remembers it.
2
None of this matters if the Russians are given free reign to once again interfere with our election process. Trump appears to have given Putin the green light to do just that. Couple Russian meddling, GOP voter suppression, add on gerrymandering, and what do we get? You guessed it. Trump for another four years.
Depressing thought.
2
This is the most insightful opinion piece I have read regarding world politics. Thank you Roger Cohen
2
He can't possibly win. But the dems may just run him anyway.
1
I don't quite follow the logic here. Does Roger Cohen believe because Biden looks like a "Davos Democrat," he will lose against Trump, who looks, acts, thinks, and behaves like a life form that represents humanity’s lowest?
1
I am one who does not believe Biden can defeat Trump...or, if Biden can, then any of the candidates can, and defeating Trump is imperative. Organically, I believe the only candidate who can defeat Trump is Buttigieg. Sounds nuts, right? I don't think so. I see Biden and all of the other Dem candidates, sans Buttigieg, doing that thing Democrats do when Trump spews his insults and nonsense: they smile or even chuckle. But there is nothing amusing or pleasing or funny about Donald Trump. Trump represents the death of our democracy, and that is nothing to smile or chuckle about. Dems do this I guess to come off as easy going. Well, stop it. Buttigieg has a self-possession, calm, humility, and authenticity which is what I believe is needed to defeat Trump. Buttigieg would almost even ignore Trump's shenanigans, as if he didn't hear them, not react, and stay, instead, focused on his own agenda, and in a serious but calm and intelligent manner. That is what is needed to not only defeat Trump but it is what would truly illuminate just what a buffoon Trump is, and Pete would do that w/o lobbing one wisecrack at him. He would allow Trump to do the work himself of making clear the mistake we made in 2016. Sadly, America is not ready for a woman president. A woman must be vice first, so please...Buttigieg/Harris-or-Warren. Totally winning ticket.
To begin with. Trump is an aberration. And his lust for wealth and capital acquisitions well places him in the Davos-billionaires league, even if he refuses to attend the actual meetings.
It's difficult to find any "brilliance" in this.
Another thing.
Trump "got out there" not so much because of Hillary Clinton, although employing Russian help was a masterstroke in duplicity -- but because his main appeal was founded in restoring America to the great white hope of yesteryear, while banning persons of color from entering the gates.
That's why he keeps on clinging to a promise to 'Build that wall'.
So knock Biden if you want to. But he never won an endorsement from the Ku Klux Klan.
And anyone who can overlook that isn't seeing the entire picture.
3
Time to keep your barbs to yourself Roger. We need unity as never before. We well know what kind of candidate Biden is, but we're going to hold our noses and vote him in. We can't lose this next one.
1
This: "Such listening is critical. Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton," is utter nonsense. Trump's only appeal is to unfounded and ancient fears, that have no basis in reality. To believe that somehow there is an upside to Trump, that he sensed some need in the electorate, is the surest example of how brainwashed the electorate has become. Trump did one thing: he dug deep down and found the fear that would allow him to hustle the American people. This appeal to the 'red meats of motivation," has nothing to do with insight and surely not wisdom. The only accurate thing that one can say about Trump is this: we have fallen so low that a huckster and a liar has become our president. QUIT WHITE WASHING TRUMP!
1
I nod my head in agreement as I read point after inexorable point Mr. Cohen starkly raises.
As I finish the piece I can only think, “This is not just good, it’s downright scary.”
Just Like RBW and some others replying to this piece, I normally like Roger Cohens views, but not this time! It exemplifies the elites he decries: he's not listening, dismissing the views of ORDINARY Dems and independents who will vote for Biden because he is NOT a complex "visionary" (E. Warren, Sanders et al) but represents a steady, modest return to the sanity they seek. They feel he can defeat Trump.
You might call Trumpism a "revolution", but better to call it what it is: Reactionary Pulp Fiction! It began in UK and EU - who had mass immigration after Arab spring and a 5 year mideast drought (climate change).
Eliz Warrens policy ideas are good, but the Trump and the Repubs will have a heyday stoking even deeper fear of Warren than they did with Hillary. Lots of women and people of color know this.
It's the same old trap the "elite", leftist wing of Dems falls for (and Warren is the best of that lot): ie. naively believing good policy is all that's needed to overcome the irrational and conspiracy minded fears the Trump/Repubs/Fox has sewed so effectively, as likewise happened in Brexit. Meullers report makes it clear Russian social media genius will keep influencing and dividing US and EU. The only "revolution" is not the reactionary, shallow ideas of Trump, Bannon, Brexit, et al,... but how social media makes it ALL so easily possible, nearly unstoppable! At least until the day a solid majority of us evolve past the social media hypnosis we are under.
1
Given his potential appeal in the swing states, Biden is ok with me as long as he assures that he'll be a traitor to the Clinton party once elected and embrace some of Elizabeth Warren's proposals, perhaps appointing her as Inequality Czar. He will need a running mate that resonates strongly with women and minorities. Biden-Harris sounds plausible.
2
Very well said by Mr. Cohen. Left, right and centre, Americans have been calling for change away from the establishment since the Bush-Cheney fiasco.
Biden represents that old Pax Americana of empire that rules for the rich and their upper middle class functionaries. Trump is seen as the one to "shake up the establishment" for the working class. Biden looks old; Trump looks young.
Should Mr. Biden become president, he would be unlikely to be able or willing to make the changes most Americans want.
The Democrats still support NAFTA and have ignored the student loan crises that resulted from a shift in educational funding from the States to the students over the past thirty years. They don’t care about the loss of factory (union) jobs and have proposed exactly nothing to solve the immigration problem. If the Republicans ever come up with a real health care plan, the Democrats are toast.
I guess poll-testing has determined that an 'ask not what your country can do for you' candidate wouldn't do very well. And that's why we have 25 more-or-less identical people promising tax cuts and free everything.
In a pandering contest, Trump is going to win.
Joe can be a dignified, homey, warm Elder Statesman, but the 2020 candidate. For me, at least. I cannot forgive his active support for the 2005 Bankruptcy Act wherein Chapter 11 became the swift and easy way for corporations to declare 'bankruptcy to avoid paying pensions or settling lawsuits or workers' claims, and kept right on chugging along without consequences...and made filing Chapter 7 for regular folks who were decimated by medical expenses, etc almost impossible..And it was Joe who added the amendment that made it impossible for student loans to be included in Chapter 7 filings. He has yet to answer for that travesty.
2
Cohen is right. The political climate is changing as fast and as definitively as the actual climate—and neither are going back to what they were.
My fear is that the era of liberal democracy is over. Our economic system may be collapsing of its own success. Technological innovation, specialization of labour, mass production, globalization, corporatism, capitalism—together all have made our economy as productive as it ever has been. Vast wealth has been created and standards of living have risen exponentially across much of the world.
But these great successes are also leading to great wealth inequities, an increasing lack of financial security and stability among the majority of the population, and a looming environmental crisis that may well turn out to be a catastrophe. Authoritarian governments like Russia's and China's are in some ways every bit as successful and stable as the liberal democracies. And authoritarianism is easy on the people. It lifts the heavy burden of governing oneself from one's shoulders. If the ruler can deliver food and security dependably, how valuable really is freedom?
Maybe there is an alternative vision for the future. Maybe some Democrat will be able to allay the people's fears and offer some compelling solution to our crises of financial insecurity, decaying communities, and environmental degradation. But I'm afraid our problems are too large and complex. The people want simple solutions. They want a saviour. They will elect a charlatan.
4
No. No, we won’t.
I agree this is a global ‘revolution’. But I see it as driven more by anger and impotence than fear and nationalism. Those have just been useful tools to manipulate, played out masterfully.
Our origin revolution, ‘no taxation without representation’ seems to have been updated to ‘no governance without participation’. Lobbyist, political backers, are the only voices heard, the only interests considered. ‘The Party of Davos’ is indeed short hand for, replacement of, smoke-filled rooms.
And why are we blaming China, other ‘race-to-the-bottom economic destinations, for our own tax laws, policies, greed, lack of any protection for our own workers, industries, over....40 years now. We, the Brits, France, et al- did it to ourselves.
Globalism, like communism, socialism, capitalism, can have many versions, variants. The revolution here is against this version of globalism. Find a better one.
As for nationalism, some long ago op-ed, discussion, tried to differentiate between national pride and it’s ugly twin, nationalism. Biden, in appealing to the Pride, would leave the revolution’s root causes in place. How is that different than appealing to nationalism (Trump) and changing, nothing.
1
I agree that Biden is less than ideal, but so are many of the other contenders. The way I see it, no matter who wins, he or she will have a clear set of tasks and I would hope that any winner would make them a priority. These include: restoring the rule of law and faith in government, reestablishing relationships with world leaders, telling Putin his interference stops now, undoing most or all of Trump's executive orders, fixing the mess at the border, choosing an honest and competent Cabinet, and rejoining the Iran Nuclear Treaty, among others. Whatever the next president can do quickly to undo the damage that Trump did should be Priority One. Beyond that, progressive action and laws require that the Democrats keep the House and win the Senate. Without a majority in both houses, change cannot happen. So I hope that voters focus on what needs to be done first (securing our democracy) and keep in mind that unless we win the Senate, no progressive plans will even matter.
4
@CJ
Well stated, CJ. Concise and entirely correct!
1
@Joe Runciter
Thanks, much, Joe!
Exactly. Even in his Congressional prime, Biden stood in the take-few-risks column--particularly on gender, race, and class issues.
And these are paramount issues today and there's little evidence he's ahead of the curve.
The country is in crises of health care, immigration, living wage, white supremacy, religious zealotry, hunger, environmental inequities--of most of the ills that fall on most of the population.
The United States needs a new voice. Biden doesn't have that.
1
So wrong. For every under-educated, under-employed, marginalized middle-American Trump supporter, there’s a college educated, gainfully employed, enfranchised coastal Trump supporter. His appeal isn’t to the “common man”, it’s to bigots of all stripes.
8
Bidens a non starter for president. Problem is the Dems can't get out of their own way, why not bring back Hilary?
2
Does anyone really believe a lightweight like Buttigieg will be able to accomplish anything as president? Consider how difficult it was for Obama. He was no match for the seasoned political warriors in Congress. Compared to them, Obama was like a rookie quarterback in a Super Bowl game. Buttigieg is more like a water boy.
7
Sanders and Warren are the right candidates to beat the Russian and Republican oligarchs.
5
Ah, the Euro-phile wakes. Just in time to see the speeding train heading right for him. Guess he missed the thirty years of the klaxon sounding.
1
Oh no! Not Biden! It will be a bobblehead running against Trump. Biden will get trashed. The Democrats will spend four years again regretting their choice.
My regrets to the Republic.
4
"China is set on an implacable course to run the world in the second half of this century. If that is not precisely what you want for your children............"
What? I guess you want your children to sign up for one of the only employment games in town in the USA.
The US Army......so they can go and make profitable the killing of the locally born in the Middle East......
That's better than China's approach?
C'mon. Our leaders have sold out America and Americans for war, profit, largesse and theft.
Let's see what other countries can do. Why not?
After all, in the time since 2008 where we borrowed 11 trillion dollars from China to ostensibly do projects here, we did nothing, literally squandered the money in Iraq and the rest of our wars.....and wasted on projects that never even started.
In the same time framed: China built bullet trains between all the mid and large towns and cities.
China created more millionaires and billionaires than any other country on earth.
China has raised billions from poverty to middle class.
In the same time frame, without borrowing any money at all, China has made a positive difference for its people.
The USA? Well, you be the judge.
1
Dear Mr. Cohen,
I agree with your observations. Really brilliant column!
However, the most critical point is missing. Why are we in this situation?
One of the problems is your employer, the NYT!
I can guarantee you based on my own experience that this newspaper has systematically repressed publication of the truth and early comments that would preempt all those problems.
I could assure you that my op-eds in which I was preventively warning about all the problems to develop from the corruption of the Democratic Party by the corporate donors, the futility of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lybia, the consequential hatred, the economic cost and human losses that would radicalize the western society, the housing bubble, the export of the American jobs overseas, the reckless tax cuts instrumental only to amassing the wealth into the hands of the one percenters were systematically and intentionally trashed.
That’s why we are in the current position.
Belief that those who created the problems could solve them isn’t the faith but the foolishness.
The faith is something completely opposite. It teaches us how to recognize our own mistakes, hubris, ego, bias, hatred and conceit…
2
I remember being very surprised, after hearing endlessly about the Trump voters of 2016 being the "forgotten people", who have somehow been ignored by the "Democratic elites", that a detailed breakdown of the demographics of Trump voters vs Clinton voters showed no difference in economic class between the two groups, and that this whole "forgotten people" thing is nothing but an urban myth - here apparently perpetuated by the NYT, to what end I do not know.
3
Excellent, perceptive column.
Reading some of the comments here suggests few got your point, either because of cognitive dissonance or an outright refusal to see.
I sense the NY Times is slowing turning a large ship of fools, even if its own hand is unsteady on the rudder.
2
Trump did not win the election in 2016 but he did win the propaganda mill. That's the crime we're living with. Who will save America from the precipice?
5
Excellent analysis. The same thing is happening throughout Europe. People are tired of the hypocritical liberal elitists who wine and dine in Davis.
3
Roger Cohen would love for Elizabeth Warren to be the Democratic nominee. Warren is the only candidate in the top of the Democratic field who doesn't beat Trump in current polls.
Trump couldn't get a foothold in Davos because he's a complete failure as a businessman. David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who wrote a book about Trump, believes Trump's net worth recently was around negative 295$ million. In The Nation, Johnston describes how Trump lost a civil tax fraud trial because he photocopied a return signed by his lawyer, altered it then pasted the lawyer's signature on the photocopy he filed. He got caught. For Trump to present himself as anyone's canny savior is a joke.
Trump isn't really being president. He's playing the part in a 24/7 reality WWE reality show in which the character "President Trump" uses wrestling tropes: feuds, heroes, fades, phony fights - to keep his base entertained. The nation's business isn't getting done but nothing matters to Trump but his own narcissism.
Cohen's right the Democratic Party has been Davo-tized. That hurt HRC in 2016.
But Trump isn't the answer. If anyone philosophically bankrolls Trump as an interested party, it's Vladimir Putin (also involved in Brexit). Putin's only interest is destroying western democracy.
In a pitched war between the global elite fronted by Biden & a stooge for Vladimir Putin - which is all Trump is - I'll take Biden, oblivious greed & all.
Because Biden isn't a traitor.
5
What a relief to know that there really is at least one commentator in the ivory tower of the NYT who really gets it.
Biden has already stated that once this “fever” breaks, we’ll basically go back to being the great country we’ve always been.
It’s just scary to think that someone could be that out of touch with reality.
The Davos crowd has a really great gig going on and they obviously want to keep that party going as long as possible.
Kind of reminds me of an alcoholic who insists that since he doesn’t add vodka to his morning orange juice, it’s proof he’s not an alcoholic.
There’ simply nothing that can be done to help until the alcoholic comes out of denial.
I’m really worried that even if the Democrats manages to get Biden across the finish line, the resentment will fester for four years and morph into something much uglier than what we see now.
We have to move forward, there is no going back. Biden is a big step backwards.
And I’m disappointed that Obama warned people about a “circular fire squad”, sounds like he’s telling us to be obedient sheep.
We’re at an important crossroads, and the stakes are simply too high.
3
Trump is definitely not an aberration, he is just a really crude, stupid version of Reagan, the original know nothing. Biden will lose just as Jeb(!) failed and Hillary fell.
Biden lives in an ego bubble of his own self-righteousness and wonderfulness. This is why he hasn’t been able to find the decency to admit that his running of the Thomas hearings were an epic fail and apologize to Anita Hill. It is why he thinks he isn’t a creep when he sidles up behind a woman he’s never known to rub her neck... It’s why Biden drones on and on and on when he gives a speech.
Winning is everything, but it’s not the only thing. Biden is also delusional in that he thinks that bipartisanship is still possible. He’s clueless.
The Democrats need FDR, not Joe-from-Scranton.
7
Donald Trump and brilliance is an oxymoron.
Trump is a dotard by nature and nurture.
Trump is ignorant, immature, immoral, incompetent, inexperienced, intemperate and insecure by nature and nurture.
Donald Trump is emblematic of America's enduring innate white European American Judeo-Christian majority supremacist nationalist right-wing conservative color aka race aka ethnic aka national origin bigotry, prejudice and racism.
In the last three Presidential elections the white voting majority went 57%, 59% and 58% McCain/Palin. Romney/Ryan and Trump/Pence. The Republican Party has been the preferred partisan political party of the white European American Judeo-Christian voting majority since 1964.
While the.Democratic Party has been the preferred partisan political party of 90% of the black African American voting minority beginning in 1964 through today.
5
The great false premise in this article is that Trump fostered a revolution: actually, it was a reaction. A reaction to giving more Americans the rights they deserve, such as was done by FDR, LBJ, MLK. Trump is giving voice to the racist bigots, via lies, fraud, and his racism. Biden is not even worth mentioning. The real revolutionary, who wants to continue giving Americans more rights, is Bernie! Healthcare is a human right.
4
Roger. I applaud you. You wrote an inciteful, objective column. None of the knee jerk Trump bashing which clouds all these issues. No charges of racism, fascism, etc. You simply explained the problem. Many hard working people in the Western world, people who followed the rules, were displaced, impoverished and treated like nobodies by the leaders, of what old man Bush called, the new world order. Again, congrats. If your compadres shun you, then you can hang out with Alan Dershowitz. 😉
@Tim Dowd
"Roger. I applaud you. You wrote an inciteful, objective column. None of the knee jerk Trump bashing which clouds all these issues. No charges of racism, fascism, etc. You simply explained the problem."
In other words, Roger opted not to make reference to any of those pesky facts that make Trump supporters look so. Um. Not working class. And so deplorable? The studies tell us that Trump's voters were relatively well off, with annual average incomes that were $10,000 higher than Clinton voters. The same studies tell us they were motivated most strongly by racial resentment. Your story, Tim, is a nice fairy tale but altogether false.
1
Most voters never heard of Davos, and have never seen the words, "ancien régime" before. The rise of fascism does not have its roots in anything but fear of the other, racism plain and simple, and the unscrupulous conmen who manipulate it.
4
Joe Biden: Wall Street corporatist.
Hillary Clinton: Wall Street corporatist.
Barack Obama: Wall Street corporatist.
Bernie Sanders: for the people.
Elizabeth Warren: for the people.
Kamala Harris: crushes Trump in all three debates.
Davos represents "the unhampered looting by finance capitalists."
6
Or maybe, Roger, your tacit disdain for Biden, who you ostensibly respect, and who, after all, is himself a blue-collar guy, is itself a pernicious manifestation of the Davos world vision.
1
Good column. It may be selling Biden short, but it reasonably captures the global angst that Davos politics has led us to.
America has long hoped for an “outsider”—outside traditional politics, perhaps a businessperson, honest, capable—who could resist political correctness and corruption and speak to universal truths while uniting us. Someone who could represent the common man and woman. “Drain the swamp” or “MAGA” are political slogans but are shorthand for this.
We longed for Jimmy Stewart but got Donald Trump. But Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders are outsiders in their ways too.
The Democratic Party and the left have particularly lost their way. Once the party of the working class, Democrats have been captured by an increasingly radical left that disdains working class whites. “Deplorables” “clinging to their guns and religion” and never ending, blanket, accusations of “white privilege” reek of this disdain and condescension. Even the NYT regularly classifies them as “less educated” whites, never working class or blue collar. The left comforts itself by dismissing them as bigots and xenophobes, or religious simpletons, but this is false just as such generalizations about any large group are false. At best, the left thinks they simply don’t know what is good for themselves.
No, if you are a blue collar worker in the Midwest, you can feel the left spitting on you and what you stand for. Surprised they don’t like it?
1
Roger writes: "For all his Scranton blue-collar beginnings, Biden..."
One of Biden's founding myths is that he is blue collar through and through; and that he is a union man do or die.
Biden's father's hands were free of grease; he was a used-car salesman. White collar.
Biden was asked to come to Wisconsin and speak on behalf of unionized workers who were facing Scott Walker's and the legislature's brazen attack on unions. Biden took a pass. The unions got creamed.
Thank you Roger Cohen and thank you NYT. I wish we would have had more of this analysis of the Democratic front runner in 2016.
Joe, a genuinely nice guy, is so out of touch with the current political zeitgeist, that it beggars the imagination. He is just two weeks into his candidacy and we have had two examples of this cluelessness: the first personal- sniff gate; the second, and most disqualifying, horrifyingly political- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/joe-biden-dick-cheney-video-mike-pence-jimmy-carter-a8897371.html
1
Finally, an editorial in the NYT that actually makes sense. I hope the Democrats refuse to pay attention and nominate Hillary the 2nd (a/k/a Joe Biden).
What a difference a couple of years make. I have previously loved reading Mr. Cohen's writings, appearing as such a stalwart supporter for lovers of liberal democracy. But now I read, shockingly, he seems to have been coopted into Trump's worldview, almost apologizing for this man and supporting his policies. I guess this is commonplace in the slip towards fascism, but I never expected Mr. Cohen to acquiesce.
His second piece knocking Joe Biden in a month and now supporting Elizabeth Warren seems to suggest he is firmly routing for a Trump victory in 2020. Elizabeth Warren is a brilliant woman with bright and articulated policy proposals, but she has about as much chance as Hillary Clinton did in 2016 of beating Trump. She is a fatally flawed candidate because of her repeatedly claiming throughout her life that she was a Native American and she is the only Democratic candidate in a CNN poll yesterday who did not beat Donald Trump.
Joe Biden does seem a bit rusty out of the gate, but I assume he will get back in fighting form once the race progresses. And for me, I would finally get a good night's sleep if Biden or any other Democrat is elected President in a year and a half. But honestly, after reading this piece and his last one damning Biden, I think Mr. Cohen would prefer Trump for a second term.
4
@Rich D
Joe Biden can't punch his way out of a paper bag.
As for Warren, she grew up in Oklahoma where family lore informed her personal belief that she comes from native American ancestry. Why people fault her for that is a mystery to me.
Why do all the major credit companies home office in Delaware? Thank Uncle Joe!
29.9 APR.. Thank Uncle Joe!
2
One question for Joe Biden. Why didn't you run in 2016?
1
The problem is not difficult: the Democratic Party does not have an ideology---a program for America.
Democrats, if you are listening: get your act together and take care of the" basket of deplorables".
Biden is the USA's modern day version of Neville Chamberlain, who in cahoots with Pelosi and Schumer is still negotiating and working with the enemy. Our country needs a Mr. or Ms. Churchill.
Are we to deal with Trump as a verity of Life to be seen as “Normality”, when his common functioning system is basically
founded on survival by Success. Here is a man who freewheels
in fabrication and chronic Lying. My life as a Licensed Family Therapist has brought me to simply diagnose his presence as a Sociopathic Personality Disorder...(Use Narcissistic if you like).
At 82, I don’t mind risking my judgmental moment in this moment when we, the People, are being subjected to “President” Trump’s flagrant abuse of the Power granted his flagrant Being
as he occupies the highest Office in our Land...the Oval Office.
He has used chronic Lying in that Occupation, merely one of his
major Symptoms of the aforementioned “Diagnosis”. A leading
word in this article was “aberration”. In our “President” an
aberration would be the Truth. I am saddened at our state of
Being as a Country. I feel No Voice.....beyond a simple Vote.
1
When President Xi learned that Biden said China "is not competition for us," his ever-present cat-who-ate-the-canary smile (as seen in the photo gracing this article) must have grown even broader, maybe even broad enough that he showed his teeth for once.
"Not competition for us?" Biden's words should come as a surprise to...us.
1
Do you want to defeat Trump or not? Lizzie Warren won’t make it.
1
Appalling to read that Biden could has said that China is not a competitor!
Where has he been? Xi Jin Ping and his lacquais have been open in their speeches that they want to dominate the world, economically, militarily, strategically, while annexing nearby Xinjiang and the Uighurs, Tibet and the South sea archipelago of the Paracels and the Spratleys.
Anyone who believes that China, and Russia, can be dealt with through nice, gentle negotiations does understand the real world in which we have been living, and is therefore incompetent to lead the USA.
1
Here's what makes me smile.....
When Wall Street goes bankrupt(as it has many times in the past 30 years).....it demands that the US Govt bail it out.
When Donald Trump goes bankrupt......he makes Wall Street bail him out.
Yeah.
America needs you, Harry Truman.
1
Joe Biden would motivate the Democratic base even less than John Kerry did in '04, and will probably inspire another Ralph Nader/Jill Stein to run third-party against this corporate sycophant and labor impostor.
1
Oddly but surprisingly Cohen makes no mention of the threat that Islam and Muslim migration pose to the West. I challenge Mr. Cohen to dress in Orthodox Jewish garb and walk through any of hundreds of Muslim neighborhoods in Western Europe. Just make sure your life insurance is paid up. Thankfully there are fewer places in the US where he would surely also be assaulted but they're growing.
1
Biden said that about China? Oh my gosh, he’s worse than I thought. Is he competing with Bill Barr for most ridiculous political statement of the week?
3
Thank you for this piece. Let’s hope the Clinton/Biden DNC can read.
As the neocon liberal pant suit militia of the DNC, who gave hundreds of millions the middle finger, cheated and then blackmailed us, denying us Bernie while ordering us to ‘fall in line’ for their candidate forced on us from above, this time, they need to instead throw all support behind Bernie. The lesser of two evils and same ole, same ole, like Biden, et al, will bring us closer to, in fact, mass extinction, regardless of how much corporations and the Koch brothers help them pay for ads.
I have been listening closely and thinking profoundly after the 2008 financial crisis. I with a background in divinity, international affairs and the sociology of international development have proposed an innovative, or even a transformative global governance system that can be a counterweight against Trumpism in the USA and many other regions of the world.
In Verhagen 2012 "The Tierra Solution: Resolving the climate crisis through monetary transformation" (www.timun.net) I proposed to use the unjust, unsustainable and, therefore, unstable international monetary system as a means to deal with the largest challenge of the 21st century which is to be included in any innovative system. The proposed Tierra global governance system is based upon the carbon monetary standard of a specific tonnage of CO2e per person and a balance of payments system that accounts for both financial and ecological (Climate) debts and credits.
States an innovative global thinker and doer: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.” Bill McKibben, May 17, 2011
Spot on. I am a liberal who sits for coffee in the morning with far-right hillbillies (a term of pride, for me too) and dairy farmers and the like. They want the same things liberals do when the spin and hype is removed.
1
@Gregory Scott Nass. I've heard them spout downright communist ideas, like command and control setting of wages for certain workers, like teachers. I explain that markets set prices in capitalism, including salaries.
Roger ignores that what Trump most listened for and responded to was the whine of white dismay that Barack Obama could be president. Much like the nation's relief when Ford restored decency to the White House after Nixon, Biden's appeal may be exactly that he will restore business as usual instead of the rape and plunder we are experiencing now.
2
Biden is clueless. He should be calling his friends at the credit card companies looking for a cushy sinecure—he’s earned it. Not running for President!
1
There are few other myths closely associated with Donald Trump.
One of them is the alleged white privilege.
What white privilege?
What was the cradle of the humans? Africa!
Where were the oldest human civilization? Egypt and Mesopotamia!
Where were born all the God prophets? Africa and the Middle East!
If the Caucasians were complaining about the unfair start and blamed the rest of the world for their difficulties (extremely harsh winters, plague, cholera, measles, earthquakes, vulcan eruptions, Genghis Khan massacres, the Ottoman and Arab conquests), nobody would be talking today about “white privilege”.
Something like that doesn’t exist. The color of your skin is completely irrelevant!
What matters?
Good parenting, the best system of values, the hard work, the team spirit, solidarity, education, patience, sacrifice, persistence, and other MORAL TRAITS!
Let's all read or re-read again David Bentley Hart's Columbia in last weeks' NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/opinion/sunday/socialism.html and ponder on our unique national genius for stupidity.
People for the most part vote for what feels good now and not necessarily what is good for them in the long run. They felt good about what Trump was saying and what he said he would do, so they voted for him. If any of that has changed and changed for the worst, they might not vote for him regardless of what is promised by another candidate, the first one made was not kept. It's what's happening in their daily lives and what's in their wallets not all that incessant chatter about Davos, or the 1%, fake news, collusion/conspiracy etc. etc. and so forth.
2
I want a president who looks like our future, not our past. We need a person who has come of age in the post 9-11 world, the Afghan wars and climate change. We need a person for whom the technology revolution is second nature rather than someone who, like me at age 74, manages to get by but is hardly at ease with it. We need a person who can see beyond profit-at-all-costs, who can see that all people - not just Americans- are created equal.
We need someone who understands that homosapiens, as the dominant species (for the present), must own up to its responsibility to protect our planet. We need a person who will acknowledge that we must learn to do less with less and who will promote ways for us to achieve that goal.
We need someone who is young or young at heart and, at the same time, is wise.
2
Trump is both a disrupter and an aberration. He served a purpose in shining a light on a lot of issues that weren’t being taken seriously enough, but at the end of the day, most Americans want reform, not revolution.
Case in point - after Trump was elected, there were lots of protests in the streets. But where are those protests now? People want to go back to living their lives and getting back to a sense of normalcy. They have issues and want to be listened to, but are not ready to smash everything they have - hence Biden’s appeal. I’m waiting for a real platform of reform from Biden to back up his pro-labor words, but we have more time before the election.
I think this analysis is only half right: Biden, Macron, Trudeau are all part of the ancient régime, and so Biden isn't the right one to take over right now. He is part of the ideological mindset that led us here.
But I dispute the implication that Trump is part of the 'revolution'. I think Trump, Brexit, Bolsonaro - that is all the dying gasps of the old order. The old order is corporate rule - either through the neoliberal idea that government's job is to facilitate corporate wealth through triangulation, or through the far right's more aggressive anti-regulation + nationalism tropes.
The real revolution is what is coming after Trump. It involves a fundamental reshaping of how we want our governments to interact with corporate interests to avoid a system that lets an uber-wealthy corporate few enrich themselves at the expense of the many, to not only our financial detriment, but also to our environmental wellbeing.
3
I agree with you Roger Cohen, totally. However, this election is number one on my list and my friends lists as well. All we can think of is "getting dt out of the White House." I think Elizabeth Warren has many of the answers to make this country a better place but, I also like Mayor Pete, and Amy Klobuchar.
1
China is our competition...for the 21st century. Its main rival for dominance is the climate, which may efface us all.
The best competitive response to China is to address, aggressively, the rule of law in finance, trade, and commerce, since China is bent on stealing what it cannot create. Then, of course, we compete by deploying the next great economy-powering ideas, while assuring domestic tranquility with humane policies for the poor and weak.
We win the climate kerfuffle by fostering a worldwide environment clogged with breathable air, drinkable water, nutritious food, and an adequate landmass. An enormous interlocked set of tasks, to be sure, and one that, ironically, will require China and us to work together on many fronts, with no guarantees at all, since, of course, Nature, climate's mom, always wins. That game is completely rigged.
One thing is for sure. It really isn't about who tweets longest and loudest.
I still don't see how Democrats cannot go to 2020 without a woman on the ticket and can't see any woman present comfortable sharing that ticket with Joe Biden.
More Trump jeers coming, surely.
1
I always read Cohen. His writing reflects clear thinking, so clear that he has good analogies. And we need innovation, that most popular word in business and technology, more than ever in government. Our elected leaders, rather than making hard choices and figuring out to make things work, simply spin words instead. We need someone with real solutions and, more importantly, the ability to turn ideas into practical programs. Biden is not that man: he is too old, he is too standard, and, quite frankly, he has been found guilty of intellectual theft, plagiarism. So what new things can we expect from him? Unlike Jerry Brown in California, who repeatedly took on our institutions and made things work better, Biden has mostly been a bystander. We need a real captain of the ship, someone to take direction and make sure the rest of the crew is working together. Trump claims to be directing things, but he's happy to steer us into an ice berg while his rich pals get in the life boats.
5
I think that Roger Cohen makes some very good points. We are in a transition period in the world. The world of unimpeded free trade with its effects of union busting, low wages, flat lined careers, and wealth shrinkage in the middle and hyper wealth at the top has come to an end. Countries are retrenching, becoming protective of their own citizenry, nationalities, and culture. Trump rode that wave by co-opting Bernie Sander's rhetoric while Hillary and the corporate Davos Dems ignored the discontent that was obviously all around them. So what's the way forward? It certainly cannot be a return to the old ways that led to this revolution. Instead, Democrats must show a way forward and a faction of the Democratic Party get this. It's found in the New Green Deal as proposed by Ed Markley and Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez. It's found in the proposals to reign in and add oversight to Wall Street as proposed by Elizabeth Warren. It's found in a commitment to expand healthcare to all citizens echoed by several Democratic candidates. These are progressive policies. Most of these policies are supported by the vast majority of the American people. If the Democratic Party has a future its the future not going back to the past.
6
What a wonderful article - from an unlikely source, given my reading of Mr. Cohen's fine columns for years.
YES, Europe is "ahead of us" on lots of this "disruption," and that DOES put him in an ideal position to be instructive.
Only his metaphor in the first paragraph betrays what HE wishes would return as "normal" -
"to steer a middle course between Wall Street & Main Street."
That would be hunky dory with most of the NY Times' editorial team - and IT (and its European equivalents) helped pave the way for the perfectly awful blowback we're all trying to live through and get past.
Just to be clear, there are literally millions of Main Streets and Elm Streets and all the rest vis a vis ONE!! "Wall Street," and for all that some would have you believe what was once said about GM, I think - "what's good for Wall Street is good for America" - most of us know that to be a lie, with the events of 10 years ago as proof positive thereof.
I'd also take issue with Mr. Cohen's exalted "listening" - even when it's sincere - not likely the case with Macron. Even a 50-year old politician has heard enough to either "get it" or to decide - a la Trump & Biden - that THEIR truths matter more than millions of other voices.
Trump's inauguration - juxtaposed against the Women's Marches at the same time - is proof of that.
Ditto, Biden, still defined by his years as "Senator from Delaware," where segregation was OK and financial services companies' satisfaction was paramount!
1
Cohen goes to the depths of detail that will never hit the level of awareness for most voters. They want a comforting stable protagonist who will make their voices heard ---not always caring what exactly that voice is saying. Biden can get the majority vote out. Sanders cannot.
1
Another column that Trump would heartily approve of!
Here's the bottom line, Trump's best chance of winning another 4 years (which would out our democracy as we know it at serious risk), is for the the Democratic party to go with a hard left nominee just like Bernie or Warren. Good luck in PA and the midwest with either one of them in the general election. Is Biden perfect, absolutely not (but the last perfect person that I know of was crucified, literally). However he is a solid democrat, who loves and respects our democracy. How about we worry about "Davos" a bit down the road, and for right now focus on carrying the midwest and saving our Country!
3
@George I grew up in the Midwest. I was in Iowa from 2016-18. They hated Hillary with a white hot burning passion but as a Bernie supporter I found I had a lot in common with people who voted Trump. I'm not saying we agreed on everything but we had a lot of common issues with the country. My best friend was a pro-Trump, get-your-hands-off-my-guns, state worker who, ironically, was a member of a union that was crushed by the Iowa Republicans. She's still Republican. But she was also one of the most generous people I've ever met. She grew up on a farm and was raised by devout Catholic parents. The Midwest is a place with a lot of nuances. The candidate who gets that might be able to repair the country. I'm not holding my breath.
3
Cohen's opening sentences reveal the weakness of his argument. If the Age of Trump means image is everything, in which a candidate's actual history doesn't really matter, then Biden has as much of a shot as anyone else -- regardless of Davos.
4
This article is spot on. I hope the Dems are listening.
4
Why did Hillary get about 3 million more votes than Trump?
Why was the constant drum beat chanting at Trump's rallies "build that wall", and not "equitable wealth distribution"? To be sure our current gilded age is producing the fear necessary to fuel the hate of the "others", and globalization is producing the gilded age, but Trump is not a part of any movement other than the republican stock in trade named racism. Republicans adopted Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in 1968 and used it for every subsequent president they have had. They won't change their approach.
4
Our Delaware and National Senior Statesman, Joe Biden, is a decent, honest, well-spoken, Democratic Candidate who can, if nominated, beat the always lying, corrupt, Russian compromised, totally failed president. whose base is not large enough to elect him to a second term.
If joe has baggage, it is due to 40 years of service experience that is greatly needed.
The several Democratic candidates add to the current discussion of all the important issues. As a Democrat, I will vote for whoever is the Democratic Nominee.
4
What you are calling Davos Democrats most of us have been calling NeoLiberals. They simply sold themselves out to wall street, help close unions, and went big time for deregulation. They collect millions from their donors. It started with Bill and Hillary I think and now includes Pelosi, Biden, Obama and most of them. You can't survive unless you join them. Modern corruption at its finest. It is part of globalization and the decline of America.
7
Yes so let’s elect a conman who was handed 300 million by his father, who’s a well documented swindler, in bed and money laundering with Deutsche Bank and Russia, and in this spare time setting up fraudulent Universities and charities. Not to mention a man who can’t seem to open this mouth without a lie coming out.
That’ll fix the Nation. Right on!
Nope. America has always had its discontents but they were less than 50 percent of the vote. For example the 1930s were a hotbed of revolution led by people like Huey Long, Fr. Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh (America First!) and others. FDR managed them. The difference today is that the Russians had Facebook and sponsored a mirror image of the Bolshevik Revolution. The world is still reeling from the original revolution and will feel the effects of Trump for generations. American needs to remove Trump root, branch and stem (talking about you Jared and Ivanka). Biden, and many of the Dems, is a proven commodity who knows how to do America.
1
Let’s not forget that Trump won because millions of democrats and independents stayed home. They will vote in 2020 and Trump will
lose.
5
@Tom celandine
Why should they? The Democrats embarrassed themselves too badly with all the collusion nonsense.
The greatest failure of the political elites was their failure to deal with climate change.
And I agree about Joe Biden - going back to middle of the road incrementalism is not going to cut it. If we don't have a revolution in how we sustain our energy needs, we are not going to have an environment worth living in or an environment that can produce enough food and water. Trump is destroying Planet Earth as fast as he can. Joe Biden's middle way is to keep giving tax breaks to big oil while maybe building a solar panel or two. We are so far beyond that, and the risk is so high that nothing short of revolution will do. Biden is not the right man for these times.
3
@Barbara the biggest failure of the political elite was to ignore the plight of the middle class voters who list their jobs and see little chance of living.the middle class American Dream
1
As a Bernie supporter up until and in the aftermath of the 2016 election, I found I had much more in common with Trump supporters in Iowa than with the DNC. If the next election doesn't produce real change America is doomed, and it might be doomed even if it does. Money is too powerful, corporations are "people," public schools have been decimated by private school campaigners and wealthy benefactors who want to experiment with education. I don't recognize the country I grew up in.
15
@MK
You make very good points but notwithstanding all of the serious problems this country faces, Trump is a unique threat. Far from disproving “collusion” the Muller report is a damning indictment of flagrant Russian manipulation of our election which Trump, his campaign manager, son and son in-law were very pleased to accept. Now Trump is gleefully fomenting chaos domestically and internationally. Is Putin pleased? As the 2020 election approaches we need to fully appreciate this. Trump will not be deterred or defeated by a self proclaimed socialist.
1
Biden has a big lead in the polls now but the primaries are won by the activist base who do the hard work and those are not Biden supporters. Second, Biden will be exposed in the coming debates as a crony capitalist and his lead will quickly vanish.
1
According to a Times article at the time, Davos industrialists spent a lot of quiet time discussing their plans to automate, and vaguely wringing their hands about who might be left to buy stuff when no one needs human labor any more. Even if Joe, friend to unions, wants to do something about that, he’ll have a hard time slowing down job losses, and may even accelerate automation and job losses with pro union policies. We need new thinking and new messaging out of the Dems because the Rs sure aren’t going to care.
1
One of the most astute pieces of political analysis I have seen in a very long time
War is coming in the Western Pacific and we will lose it if we do not radically change out way of thinking about China.We have seen nothing comparable to the build-up of the Chinese military machine since the rearmament of Germany in the 1930s. We ignore it at out peril.
"Davos Democrats" like Biden are content to do nothing as long as they get a suitable return on their invested income... Where is our Churchill?
11
The media orchestrated the ascendance of Biden prior to his announcing, and is presenting his candidacy as a fait accompli based on polling that reflects name recognition more than anything else. He has been in the public eye for decades, so it stands to reason that he is a household name.
Most of the electorate are Independents, as the Democratic party is no longer a draw for those who long for an era of economic justice. That does not augur well for the Democrats. The party may fall by the wayside in the future. Of course, the Republican Party is already dead.
If Biden, through authentic popularity or subterfuge of bitter Clintonites, wins the White House, all will not be lost. Behind the scenes we progressives will continue to gain traction. Maybe in the future a third party, truly of the people, will emerge, after all trace of the vile Trump has been wiped away.
I am hoping that within my lifetime I can witness a true progressive with a vision in the White House, especially one who will say no to endless war.
There remain too many variables, including Russian interference, obstinacy of the media to give full-throated support to the more progressive candidates such as Warren and Sanders, the manipulation of the electorate by propaganda machines like Fox, and the woefully ill educated Americans, who don't seem to understand their own democratic system.
How the Democratic leadership responds to this latest Trump-Putin outrage will also be key to their survival.
5
Trump has taken us back to the Robber Baron era of the late 19th century where we await a true reformer like Teddy Roosevelt. And, Trump's "America First" white nationalism policies have taken us back to the 1930s awaiting yet another Roosevelt. You're right that Joe Biden is no Roosevelt. He like Trump represents the economic elite when THE domestic issue is income inequality that is dividing not only our country, but destabilizing others like France as well. And again, you're right that Elizabeth Warren has the right policies to address it, but is languishing in the margin of error in the polls. The Democrats are on the verge of making the same mistake as the Republicans did in 2016 by having too many candidates that allow the extremist with their "base" of 25-20 percent to win. That means, the odds favor Biden or Bernie and not more realistic, left of center candidates who can unify the party and attract moderate and independent voters.
1
To be clear: The world continues to suffer the impact of the 2008 Great Recession, a creation of Wall Street bankers. For all the job creation in the US, the jobs are substandard, contract jobs, part-time, short-term. None provide health care coverage nor paid vacation. Even when wages are said to have gone up, so has the cost of health care, so what’s the net gain for workers? Nothing. Income inequality due to the looting by the few is bigger than ever. No wonder the public is angry at the status quo. In this context, it’s little wonder that Trump, Urban, Dutuarte and far right parties have been making gains.
In an atmosphere of anyone but a Trump, VP Biden has a good chance. The danger is that his “advisers”/ “cabinet” will be full of “geniuses” who caused the problems to begin with - where shamelessness is a life philosophy
6
This Biden hit piece is all wrong. Nobody is going to get elected President in this country unless they cater somewhat to the 1%.Obama/Biden Pelosi accomplished a lot for the average American.Trump is now riding on the coat tails of the economy they created while doing nothing for income inequality, offshoring, out of control health care costs or basic government functions like infrastructure spending.Warren and Sanders have no track record of executive experience whatsoever and their ideas will not fly with the majority of the wealthy elites. The Clintons are from an era when all trade with China was considered progress and a source of cheap goods and an era when wealth accumulated in the tech industry was a source of a robust economy and balanced budget.Unlike Biden and Obama, the Clintons got fat and lazy on their new found acceptance as former Arkansas hillbillies by the upper class. Biden is the real deal as far as the average Democrat with an unmatched track record.
3
That, Mr Cohen, is a remarkable piece. Cogently done and elegantly stated.
9
The Bureaus of Labor Statistics recently reported that the median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.2 years in January 2018. In 2017 , according to the census Bureau, about 181 million of 323 million Americans had "employment-based" private health insurance. Polls, as well as common sense, show that despite all of the many defects of private insurance, those having it tend to prefer it to either nothing or to politicians promises that single payer would be better. Progressives need to be pointing out that "employment-based" insurance lasts only as long as the job. Sure people like single payer lesss if you tell them they're going to pay higher taxes. How would most people respond to a question that asked how they'd rather pay for their health insurance. Would they rather have the money deducted from their paycheck for insurance that can be lost at any time and with which they're going to have to fight tooth and nail to get any claim paid, or would they rather pay the same amount in higher taxes for guaranteed lifetime coverage that pays claims with as little hassle as Medicare now does? Private health insurance increasingly is just a scam taking advantage of poor and middle class working Americans.
10
A brilliant article, Roger.
Biden will indeed be a tough sell for the Millennials who (finally) turned out in force to vote in a Dem House majority last Fall.
In 2020, holding onto the House, possibly flipping the Senate, and retaking the Presidency--all of these goals will require an equal-or-greater turnout of these same Millennials and the rest of the youth vote. Who crave student debt relief and a $15/hour minimum wage far more than the defeat of Trump and a return to decency.
Biden is simply the front man for the Blue Dog billionaire class who will do anything to avoid paying a bit more in taxes. Their terror of Sanders, Warren, AOC and the leftwards shift of the party has them clinging to Sleepy Joe as their last and final hope.
10
"Only the innovative will beat him." Yes, and it is going to take what marketing people call repositioning the competition. That individual has to have a solid plan that addresses top of mind issues affecting middle class America like the cost of healthcare, college and an income tax system changing the current one where the more money one makes the less taxes one pays as a % of income. This, by itself, will reposition Trump as the inept president that bought temporary economic growth through tax cuts for the wealthy and increased the national debt, has no replacement for Obamacare and no idea about the cost of college and other issues affecting the middle class. For now, the only two candidates that have any substantial ideas are Warren and Sanders. As for Biden, he is the sort that gave us Trump. Let us not forget that the Democratic party establishment elite abandoned its base and sold its soul long ago as it found an opportunity for support among Wall Street actors for future re-election. Great article. The only thing that puzzles me is the cheap scapegoating of China. The western capitalist "greedies" are the ones that took the jobs there and made China a major competitor. I would love to meet the innovative candidate that is going to create the magical incentive that will prompt capitalists to redirect their investments here!! For the moment, giving capitalists and the multinationals tax breaks is only taking us closer to third world country status.
4
Biden's comment on the economic threat of China perfectly captures Roger's perspective on this. It displays a total disregard for those unemployed workers and families who have been harmed by years of Chinese economic aggression. In this regard, the Obama years were a disaster for lower income, high school educated Americans.
Biden may think these are "his people", but Trump is the one who has spoken to them and has wrestled the Chinese dragon.
4
Who else, Roger Cohen, aside from Joe Biden, is "ill-placed" to beat Donald Trump's revolution in America? There are now 21 declared Democratic candidates for our presidency next year. Hasn't Trump reaped the whirlwind of angry,
dispossessed Americans with his red MAGA caps (like Mao's littIe red books last century)
Wealth inequality and tribal anger among the American people caused them to vote a rich and ignorant man who understood the zeitgeist of our times into our presidency. Trump wielded the awfuol power oif social media and made nobodies into somebodies. Liberals (Eggheads) were no more in synch with the angry right than President Macron is in synch with the Yellow Vests in France. Anger and rage against the elites informs the shift in regimes all over the world today.
Shifts happen. Biden doesn't have a chance, even though he is the front-runner of the Democratic candidates 17 months ahead of our Election. We're witnessing a shift toward alt-right nationalism and anti-immigration here in our Western Hemisphere (Venezuela, the U.S. Central America) and in the Eastern Hemisphere, where European countries are under siege by immigrants moving north from climate-warming Africa.
Asia is a cauldron today. Wondering how long President Xi-Jinping will be in power in China? How long will Kim Jong-un last in North Korea? What will happen in the Pacific Rim with the incursions and territorial land-grabbing of China? Stay tuned.
I cannot agree to ascribe “brilliance” to Donald Trump.
I believe that would be a denunciation of at least 3000 years of human endeavor.
He is, and I believe has always been, a seedy con man that happened to be in the “right” place at a very difficult time.
Mr. Trump is a carefully cultivated villain.
I don’t think Joe Biden can prevail against Trump.
He is a product of years of Democratic somnolence and complacency.
I believe Elizabeth Warren has the fire and resolve to take on the republicans. She could be their worst nightmare.
There were reports that Amy Klobuchar frequently abused and humiliated her employees, and was listed as one of the "worst bosses in Congress".
I like Klobuchar although probably not as a boss.
If I was in a difficult spot I would not mind her "watching my six".
But she should not stifle her rage. It is too valuable a resource to waste on her poor staff.
She should point her rage, from this time forward, at the republicans who endorse and empower the villain in the White House.
There should be no reaching across any aisles in the political equivalent of a knife fight.
5
You nailed it. We were screaming this truth from the rooftops in 2016. We were demeaned. Called bros. Told that super delegates had all but assured we had no chance. A candidate had been endorsed and all by elected before anyone had a chance to vote. It made us throw up.
12
"Trump’s brilliance lay in seeing that he could become the perfect impostor, the wealthy and highly visible figurehead of a 21st-century movement of the dispossessed and the invisible."
Please stop giving credit where none is due. What "Trump brilliance" are you referring to? Does Trump even understand what he stumbled into in 2016? I bet the farm that he understands diddly wit about how he ended up in the White House. A right-wing hate cabal found his race-baiting and his in-your-face bigotry quite refreshing and decided to support him against "mainstream" Republicans whose decorum and mild respect for "the system" were highly frustrating to the hate-mongers on radio and Fox who were always impatient with a system built on the rule of law. Trump's lawlessness was a major attraction for them. Sometimes when it seems there no explanations for ostensibly "complex" phenomena, the simplest explanations are the most accurate.
9
I wasn't in love with Hillary Clinton, but I wanted to see the first female elected president in our 227-year history. But 53% of white women voted for Trump. I'm convinced a woman cannot be elected president in this country. I live in liberal Massachusetts, and we have never elected a female governor and took until 2012 to elect Ms. Warren, our first female senator. In my opinion Liz Warren is the best candidate with the best ideas, but she's unelectable. Bernie Sanders has more baggage than a Samsonite factory. He will be eviscerated by the GOP's attack machine and smeared as a communist, not simply a socialist, which is bad enough. A gay man elected president? As my Scottish friends would say, you have to be "daft" to believe that. After eight years of Obama, a person of color cannot be elected. It will take a century for white voters to get over a black man in the White House. So who does that leave? Joe Biden. I'm not in love with him, either, but perhaps the country is exhausted by the daily craziness coming out of the Trump presidency. Biden may be the antidote to that, someone who can make America sane again.
4
@baldinoc - As far as I am concerned, I want Elizabeth Warren to be the person I can vote for as our next president. I am open to suggestions for her Vice Presidential candidate.
If the women of America leave her in the lurch, she will lose with honor, and all the women who vote for Trump will get what they deserve, unfulfilled promises.
Given Trump's performance to date, I cannot imagine that he can possibly live out a second term. Unfortunately, I do not think my country of birth can either.
But we need to show ourselves and the world that we can enter the 21st century, 20 years late but better then than never.
My main comment is down 5 minutes before the raft of "just now" comments of which yours is one.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
3
Though always well-written I am not buying the scope of this reasoning. A small majority of voters in gerrymander states barely pushed Trump over the Electoral College threshold. He lost the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. The driving force for the gerrymandered states was not this hybridized angry mob but well organized, well funded Republican billionaires, The Koch Brothers mob. The Trump groundswell is built on lies and Fox News. To think this is a movement is illusion. The seething mob will turn on him. Perhaps Trump tariff-impoverished farmers or tax-cut-burned retirees. This is all a fraud, and yes, Davos elites may be a factor worth discussing over tea but the real fight is wealth versus hope. Maybe the Democrats don't have a easy fix, but history has shown that Americans despise frauds, once they wake up to one.
10
Joe Biden is out of touch with the American people. He thinks he can make a few jokes and everyone will vote for him. America needs new ideas. Warren, Harris, Booker. Not some old political hack. The country will be moving backwards if he's elected.
4
Very perceptive. I think there is room for a candidate who campaigns on the slogan “Make Americans Great Again”.
Here is the formula:
Make Americans Great Again =
(Make America Great Again
- Coarseness
- Respect for institutions
Income Equality)
I see this completely different. Both Trump and Biden (even Sanders) are the continuation of the stale and stink of American politics. They are all fighting for the same thing, one class of voters and assuming that appeasing such demographics will bring some kind of redemption. The real and not so obvious revolution, is the actual loss of Clinton. Without her loss, we wouldn’t had seen the awakening of a new class of leaders or we wouldn’t had seen all the dirt under the rug and the skeletons in the closet. It is challenging to see the incredible incompetence and corruption of this administration. It is challenging to see how hateful every single day is. But it is like of those moments in life that you mat have to take magnesium citrate and deal with the consequences.
One might be excused for thinking these globe-trotting dual-citizen elites have some knowledge of the minds and mores of the people they encounter in their world travels. But one would be mistaken. Somehow between the brie, the penziones and the claret they missed the 75 million Europeans and 65 million Americans who are rejecting their every utterance and voting with mailed fists. The nativist parties of Europe and Trump are harbingers; more will come to the fore — shrewder, sharper and with more focused intent — and the numbers supporting them will overwhelm the smugly comfortable who by the very nature of their arrogant lifestyles have sown the seeds of the whirlwind about to engulf them. Run. But you will not be able to hide.
5
I'll be blunt. Biden/Harris with an implied but not formally stated 1 term Presidency for the former.
Or Oprah.
Trump cannot win again or this whole country and its history has been for nothing.
4
As long as the alternative is Trump, vote and get out the vote for the Democratic nominee, and vote for Democrats from top to bottom of the ballot. Unless of course you like the judiciary, Supreme Court first of all, stacked with reactionaries for generations to come, health insurance, education and the New Deal dismantled, consumer and environmental protection trashed and the 99% indentured serfs to the 1% in a booming economy with record low unemployment: the whole family over 16 has jobs, some of them even more than one! The State Party will be Republican, so you don’t have to worry who to vote for anymore, and the Clintons and Obamas have fled the USA and obtained political asylum in Canada, a country soon to be invaded by the USA and its new ally Russia.
1
A-men, Roger Cohen.. For 25 years the national pool-bahs of the Democratic Party have been sneering at, sidelining, ignoring, defunding and otherwise discrediting economic nationalists/fair traders like Marcy Kaptur and Senator Sherrod Brown and cultural centrists like Senator Bob Casey..their attitude was perfectly captured by Hillary"s "deplorables" put-down.. and they (and we) paid the price.. and Biden had been in the thick of all of it.. and wasn't he influential in the bill forbidding students with debt from declaring bankruptcy??
1
Warren’s defining mistake was her failure of nerve to challenge Hillary in 2016. She would have pre-empted Sanders on the left, and though the super delegate “fix” would probably have left her short, today she would be positioned as the strongest left challenger to Biden. She would be in a far stronge position today, with name recognition and thousands of volunters coast to coast. Too bad for her, and for Democrats who are sick of the whole rule by Ivy League elites who could not be more out of touch.
1
She also didn’t endorse Bernie after deciding not to run herself. Big mistake. Though I’ve forgiven her and am sending her $$ now.
2
All Trump has to say to defeat Biden, if he is so miraculously lucky to be the Democrat's nominee, is to remind voters that Biden took away their option to file for chapter 7.
1
Great article, well written but BIDEN is "same old,same old," too reminiscent of the establishment and we r not living in pro establishment times. Dems. should go with Sanders whom his supporters are fervent about, and who will settle for nothing, no one less. With Peter Schweitzer's book about "Lunch Pail Joe's"money schemes,son HUNTER'S willingness to use his father's influence to make millions as a lobbyist for Ukrainian business interests,Biden is a tarnished politician, reviled by the far left almost as much as the Clintons. Am reminded of what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman, the playwright that every word she writes is a lie, even a and the,indefinite and definite adjectives.Time has come and gone for Biden, and his essential phoniness always comes through, and those millions of home owners who lost their properties because of Biden's sponsorship of a law favoring banks and credit card companies will never be able, nor should they forgive him.
2
"China is set on an implacable course to run the world in the second half of this century."
To suggest China is on a course to run the world is scaremongering. China has zero interest in undermining Western democracies as it's remarkable success in raising the living standards of its billion and and a half people has thus far entirely derived from meeting Westerner's insatiable consumerist desires for less. What country seriously plans to antagonize their best friends and customers besides America under the atrociously incompetent leadership of Donald J Trump?
2
Such a good editorial. Why did it take so long to write it?
I hear the NYT cringe when I say, but it is true: borders between nations are the fences between the stock pens. We are the goats, and they print money to filter through us like I bale hay to feed my goats and get milk and meat.
We all are the wealth builders for whom we work and from whom we shop, and yes they are the same minority few, and these few collect ridiculous amounts of income that has been flowing to the very top for way too long.
I'll say it again:
When the farmer sells a side of goat at the farmers market, does he go back to the homestead and pay the surviving goats the money? No, he keeps it for himself. The money flows to the capital interest of the farm and the farmer, not to the workers who produce the meat.
My goats wouldn't know what to do with dollar bills, they'd try to eat them, increasing the value of their flesh to no avail. That is what the wealthy owners of the corporations and their siblings in government think: that we don't know what to do with money, heck, we'll just waste it spending it on ourselves no better than if we were buying bread for the pigeons resulting in fat birds like the famous scene from Mary Poppins.
But it has come to the breaking point and a small but sufficient number of people feel like thy are livestock. Livestock, slave, hired-hand, robot, off-shored job, none of it is desirable and yet that is what the vast majority of people feel like, and it will burst.
1
For 40yrs. America has been doing a dance of two steps backwards and one step forward. Dems have been cleaning up Repub. messes now for 4 decades. All the while electing centrists that would be Republicans back when. President Obama said his economic policies are "so mainstream" he'd be considered a moderate Republican in the 1980s. He wasn't wrong. Inequality grew hugely under his watch.
Thus, two step back and only one step forwards keeps us in a decline. Swirling the bowl, so to speak,
Once again, America is offered a chance at a "change" candidate. Two to be exact.
We haven't had such a chance since...last Pres. election when America blew it. Again.
C'mon, 'merica! We don't have anymore room to take more steps back. That bottom drain is getting closer, not farther away.
Vote "Change" like your life depended upon it.
'Cause it actually does.
NotMeUs
1
I must agree that the world neds a reset. The middle class is being forced out, most going down with a few going up. The days of living the American dream as a blue collier worker are over. That said I cant believe the American people have picked the GOP/trump to champion this change as everything they do helps the top at the expense of the bottom. I don't believe Biden is the person to champion it either however the GOP is surely the party of Davos!!!!
1
When one thinks of the distribution of work and income on the basis of the global needs, the U.S. needs a leader who will be able to recognize the realities of the changes that will need to be made without threatening the security of the larger global society and using the power of the U.S. idea to mobilize the international community to save the planet from the economic horrors of climate change and make the shift from fossil fuels to a new energy source. This is the major challenge of our time and it can't be ignored because Nature will have the final say.
The new American President must concentrate on mobilizing the international community to share the burden of meeting the global warming challenge and mobilizing technologists, engineers, and scientists to restore the climate to its pre industrial revolution state and also provide the world with a higher standard of living.
This can be achieved by creating very cheap electricity to stimulate the development of technologies to use electricity in our offices, homes, industries and transportation, www.magneticglide.com . BUT, the new electric energy source must be cheaper than natural gas, coal, nuclear, and ground solar. In his book, "Spaceship Earth", James Powell, who invented Superconducting Maglev, has proposed a Maglev launched space-based satellites beaming energy to virtually any spot on Earth, for 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Cheap electricity can desal water, make synthetic jet fuel and scrub CO2 from the air.
1
The Democratic Party is centered around a cult - a small group of party-subordinate partisan voters selecting widely unpopular nominees based on name-recognition, political status and the approval of political and media elites. They are holding the rest of the country hostage, demanding loyalty to their chosen candidate, and refusing to recognize their candidates' lack of appeal outside their small cult of partisans. This was clearly evident in 2016, with Hillary Clinton, and may well be about to occur in 2020, with Joe Biden
6
I am still amazed that the Dem's ever considered Hillary a viable candidate. She was bringing nothing to the people, not an idea not any pledge to right any wrongs, mostly status quo life after Obama. Trump for all his trumpiness brought a change of pace and the reality show excitement that created discussion everywhere where no one was taking about Hillary.
I just don't see Joe creating that excitement either. I remember years ago watching Pro Boxing and seeing legit contenders put up a noble battle only to be denied the win. Comments always were that if you want to beat the champ, putting up a good fight was not enough, you had to knock him out. Right now, unfortunately, I don't see anyone capable of knocking out trump.
1
Right on Roger "Corporate Joe" or "Biden Inc." is certainly the heir apparent to Trump in that context. You can be certain that there will be no "medicare for all" (or anything like it), nor any meaningful student debt reform, as President Joe protects the interests of his corporate masters.
1
I do not believe for one second that Trump had this grand plan to be the voice of the disenfranchised. He used the presidential election to promote his brand and he never believed he would win. If you watched his face and the faces of his family on election night, no one was more surprised than the Trump clan.
4
Largely agree...but, Trump's behavior is overshadowing is drowning out his populists message. The voting public wants some measure of normality back in the Oval Office---which Biden would offer.
2
Painfully true, and the fact that Biden just won't learn to combat China and our homegrown "Goldman Sachs" Democrats, means we could actually lose from winning.
Now, a ticket with some combination of Bernie, Elizabeth, Mayor Pete, and Kamala on the ticket or in the Cabinet...
Hugh Massengill
6
The Party of Davos
The metaphor I needed to put Joe Biden in his proper place. Thank you Roger for putting him in that place and out of the running.
And thank you for this, "... among Democratic contenders, Elizabeth Warren is listening most closely." from which I formulate.
Elizabeth Warren
Listen, Think, Plan, and Act
America Enters the 21st Century in 2020
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
To contribute $50 before submitting this I had to confirm that I am a US Citizen. Now Elizabeth Warren contribution site must realize that American voters live throughout the world and improve the form. Contribution made 06:26 GMT
5
@Larry Lundgren
Thank you for contributing to Elizabeth Warren!
That’s a question asked of everyone. Even here in the US. I had to confirm citizenship too before donating to her.
3
Biden supporters must have seen Joe an announce his candidacy in PA, man the guy could not put a sentence together, he consistently slurred worlds, could not pronounce words, he got to the point of word salad. Now he states. China is not a competitor. The guy is to old and easily confused.
3
Biden can and will move to the left as needed. Also, he will have a running mate uniquely positioned to bring voters out. He will be the perfect contrast to treason, criminal money laundering and vulgarity.
Churchillian appeals to excellence have resonance.
Mr. Cohen gives too much credence to the so-called Trump revolution. He left Russia out of the great coup. Biden & Co. won't.
3
Please explain to me the difference between Davos and the Republican-controlled Senate? Mar-a-Lago versus Aspen? One thing for sure, the golf is better in Florida. It’s hard to distinguish Lindsay Graham from a caddy these days. How does Mitch McConnell get a free pass? An international cabal, motivated by self-interest with 1600 private jets, or one person, whose private jet is Air Force 1?
10
Right on Roger: “It’s lazy thinking — and laziness has hurt the liberal center a lot over the past decade.” — maybe the last 30 years. The”laziness” of the Democrats means not playing hardball, not understanding that altruism doesn’t get you anywhere in politics, while building grassroots and a financial base does. Democrats strangely believe that demographics will lead them to success, not understanding that only organizing will. Obama understood that for his campaign but then failed to understand that in the House and Senate and in the Media, it’s Hardball every day. Democrats prefer to believe that because their causes are just, everyone will understand. Trump taught them a lesson. But Say It Ain’t So Joe doesn’t seem to have learned it.
4
Biden ‘steer a middle course between Wall Street and Main Street’
No way. Crossing America it is repeated town after rural small Norman Rockwell town. For the most part, Main Street is filled with vacancies and for rent signs. They’re all going to Walmart and the Exxon convenience stores for everything from food to clothing. Same for the family farms. Given up to Cargill and Monsanto. Mega faceless corporations are tearing the fibers of our society apart. Democrats need a heroine or hero of the working class. That is what a Democrat is.
I found this article to be extremely accurate.
1
Can anyone, particularly blue-collar workers, possible relate to the macro-outcomes of Davos? They are maddeningly busy trying to put food on the table and figuring out how to pay the next bill.
Aside from growing inequality, at the heart of America’s democracy is the stupefying of our communities, which essentially began with an education disinvestment policy in the Reagan area, and hastened by profit-driven globalization. A dullard society leans into hate and tribalism.
Ignorance is not bliss. It is a formulae for failure and disenfranchisement.
America was a dream that is now nightmarish. We are failed caretakers. Our children, alas, will suffer more so.
1
I suppose it comes down to what your path to victory looks like. With the Electoral College it’s plausible that a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren could win if they somehow capture the hearts and minds of people in FL, OH, PA, MI and WI.
But if you are talking about flipping Red States like MO, KS, IA or IN with Bernie or Warren, that’s just not going to happen. They already have their “attack dog” and his name is Donald...what’s the incentive for those voters to jump to the other end of the political spectrum?
The conventional wisdom is that only a moderate can thread both the EC and potentially flip a few Red States. Biden would do well in FL, PA and with a little work, MI. He could maybe even flip IA or MO. Perhaps another candidate could emerge that could do a similar job but the media-as-gatekeeper and the ability to raise money both present hefty obstacles to some of the newer faces...
1
Mr Cohen has over-simplified his treatise. Trump, Brexit, and right-wing nationalism are the inevitable outcomes of the 1980s Reagan -Thatcher-Mulruney era that was perpetrated by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and many other affiliated snake-oil salesmen. Sadly, the Democrats in the US, Labor in the U.K., and the Christian Democrats in Italy all lurched rightward to assuage their respective electorates in order to gain power.
There is no question, therefore, Biden has a steep climb in overtaking Trump in November 2020. However, whether we like it or not, the GOP has unleashed a torrent of federal outlays via their massive tax cuts and unrestrained federal spending. The consequence of which is an economy which is the envy of the world. Should this continue for another year, and Trump has no major domestic terrorist attack, I cannot fathom that Bernie sanders or Elizabeth Warren will have any better luck at besting.Trump.
Me Warren has credibility issues. Think Pocahontas! And let's be honest she is a woman. Yes HRC was flawed but gender was and is a handicap. Bernie is a Democratic Socialist and a Jew. You can talk policy all you want but there are realities that are grist for the GOP mill.
The senate in 2021 will be run by Mitch McConnell. The platform of sanders and Warren will die in that chamber. I am willing to see $15.00 minimum wage, tax fairness restored and a civilized executive and judicial branch. Better progress be incremental than non-existent!
1
Joe Biden, of my own generation, is too old to be President. "Mayor Pete," like Beto O'Rourke, has some attractive features but lacks experience and has done virtually nothing to fix South Bend's myriad problems. Both of them, let's face it, are just pretty faces. Democrats need to focus on a core of 6-8 realistic candidates and let those on the fringe waft off in the Iowa cornfields or the NH ski slopes.
4
terrific and scary column. Sadly, I agree with Mr. Cohen. On the other hand, I actually thought that, because of the title of the piece, there was going to be some comparison with Davos Seaworth.
It's a fantasy that the American people are actually leftists who just don't know it. If the leftist critique of American capitalism resonated with poor people, Mississippi and Alabama would be democratic states by now. And, no, voter suppression is not the reason they vote reliably republican. There is a stubborn independent streak in the American people and they will resist leftist authoritarianism to reorder huge segments of the economy. There may be no love lost for banks and insurance companies but neither is there for faceless, powerful bureaucrats. We need a dealmaker. Biden is a dealmaker.
2
The far most dangerous thing that can happen to us in 2020 is the reelection of DJT.
I have also voted in many presidential elections and have yet to vote for a Republican. It has been my experience that the revolutionary and radical do not gain enough support throughout the country and ultimately lose the election.
In my opinion, Joe Biden has the best chance to beat the current president. The Democrats have the opportunity to rid our country of this menace to society who sits in the White House. However, if the Dems insist on someone who has support from only those left of center, then the Dems are handing the Oval Office to the current crowd of misfits.
3
I don't think that Biden's China comment was meant literally, but as a matter of perspective. It was pep talk, meaning our biggest problem is with ourselves, not China. With the right attitude (and leadership), there is nothing that America cannot do better than anyone else, including China. Romney's observation that the statement will not age well is surely right, but Biden's meaning was not what it seems on the face of it. That is probably where the problem lies, in the well intentioned but inevitably gaffe-prone tendencies of Bidenhood.
1
The writer implies that Warren's proposed tax on the super wealthy is innovative. Hmmm, say what you want about it, but innovation is not a word I would use.
What I do like about Warren is her commentary about potential impeachment as part of a democratic purpose, and not an attempt to bring down Trump or anyone in particular.
Let's see if that was just a talking point or a genuine belief.
1
Can't see the real point here. Biden is the elder here that's clear. And, he is gaffe prone. But, in view of the hole that Trump has dug for the US domestically and internationally, Biden who has direct experience at that level of govt may be able to begin a recovery from the GOP debacle.
My own concern is that the best candidate, Warren, has a disadvantage of being a woman. This applies to Harris as well, my second favorite. Riding the coat tails of a Biden as a VP candidate may just make the electorate more comfortable with a woman POTUS in 2024. Biden needs to make it clear that he will not be a candidate in 2024.
One thought is that Biden could focus on recovering our international relationships, EU, Canada, etc and a Warren or Harris could focus on repairing the damage the GOP is doing to our democracy on the domestic front. Warren's thoughts and policies are well thought out along with how to pay for them.
Mr Cohen, who I respect, seems to just be making stuff up here and it doesn't really help us.
2
A Biden presidency would be a restoration of all that originally drove people to elect Trump. We need to move forward, not back, even though many people long for a kinder and gentler time, which Biden’s persona represents. But recall his earlier disastrous presidential campaigns and his many gaffes. His lack of “getting it” will take him down. The only person who’s gaffe-proof in this country, for some reason, is Trump.
1
This excellent column reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago in Cleveland. At a meeting to discuss greater public support for the arts, highly educated activists proposed a cigarette tax to pay for a new county arts fund that would distribute money to various local arts groups, including the illustrious Cleveland Orchestra and Museum of Art. Afterward, a woman who represented a large, working-class neighborhood told me why she opposed the cigarette tax. "This would penalize most of the people who live in my district," she said. "They're smokers."
1
It's a tough call. Are we really at some sort of historic tipping point where everyone wants a new system? Where the antidote or sane equivalent to DJT is Sanders or AOC? Or will the voters who count most (sorry, but we have to think about winning) just so yearn for boringness, for lack of a better word, out of 1600 PA and a steady helm that Biden actually would be/is the man to win?
I'm not a great fan of the Financial Times' new columnist Janan Ganesh, but he sort of made this argument a day or two ago.
Many counsel that these issues will work themselves out by the time Iowa comes around, or shortly thereafter. Still seems like the possibility of a third party candidate could scramble all the math.
1
The core of Trump's base which has held throughout his presidency is a shrinking demographic- old white males. Trump doubled down on a dwindling constituency and finagled an electoral college victory despite losing the popular vote by over 3 million, bolstered by unprecedented influence by both foreign actors (Russia) and supposed independent government institutions (thanks, Comey) against a flawed candidacy ...to me this "populism" movement is more reactionary than revolutionary. The more revolutionary ideas seem to come from the progressive flank on the left, to whom Biden is not the most representative, but his party's platform will certainly reflect from the diverse field of candidates running for nomination.
1
I am so pleased that I can agree almost wholeheartedly with Roger Cohen. He very astutely identifies the Party of Davos as the core problem. However, he fails to understand the depth of the damage done by the Party of Davos, which I would call the Global nomenclature.
The Global nomenclature has introduced Austerity as its main tool for establishing a Corporate Welfare State. This Corporate Welfare State is akin to a cancerous tumour that is metastasising rapidly and appears to be intent on War. Recall that the First World War was started by a group of European cousins, the royal families of all the Great European Powers, who did not realise they would be the long-term casualties.
4
It is early in the election process's and the party leadership giving the early nod to Hilary via Super Delegates was a mistake. Let's allow this to unfold in debates, in rally's and learn the capabilities of each candidate. In addition let's pay closer attention to history.
Trump's tax plan is a failure and dangerous to our long term economic health and security, infrastructure is a mess, caol is not the future on and on.
Be patient , be aware, be informed and let the nomination process takes its course.
4
Trump is more than Trump. Until the Left gets that, it won't defeat him. But we'll probably get a Trump of the left - empty slogans that sound great but don't work in practice. Build the wall = Green New Deal. Sounds great, but what exactly?
5
By any objective standard, Green New Deal is better than Build a Wall. Even if both are empty.
3
@Jose Pieste
The difference: one is useless and costs $30 billion while the other will create jobs and probably save the planet and therefore worth pursuing at all costs.
3
Biden, while not perfect, isn't as tainted as Cohen proposes. He will beat Trump. The other leading Dems can too easily be tarred and feathered as "socialists" or extreme leftists. The damage proliferated by deregulation, tax breaks to the wealthy, and all the other behind-the-scenes accomplishments of this administration is just too great to risk losing in 2020. Biden isn't perfect, but he'll beat Trump.
7
Doubt it. Do you know any women? Ask them if they’ll be voting for Biden.
1
An excellent column by Roger Cohen. He sees the Trump phenomenon for what it really is. And a figure coming from the wealthy class to lead the dispossessed is not new, as shown by
Caesar, FDR and JFK. .
I didn't think I had a dog in this fight. I still don't know who it is, but I know it's not Biden.
5
Yes time for a real consideration of Elizabeth Warren. Think about who has gotten into politics for power, ego and self-aggrandizement and who has had a career learning and thinking about how to make people's lives better. She's been innovative and effective for a long time.
18
@Andrea — I like Warren, but let’s not rewrite history. She was a Republican all through the Reagan years, when a great deal of the structural damage to our economy was done. I’m glad she finally had a conversion, but that’s what it was. As for the “long time,” that’s at least debatable. She’s only been in public office about 6 years, compared with 30+ years for Bernie, who’s been a liberal all that time.
I too don't think Biden is our best option, but give him a chance to articulate HIS positions now. See where he stands.
As for whether China is our competitor, we might reflect on this notion of competition. It sets up a zero-sum game in a world that has to learn to live as a positive-sum one.
Chinese people need to eat and to have shelter and health care. We need to find a way for all of us to obtain these.
Is Biden a Davos guy? Let's ask him. Does he not appreciate the challenges of China's role in the world? Ask him. And ask the others. Let the best candidate win!
2
Roger Cohen makes a good point when he writes that Emmanuel Macron set off French protests by proposing an increase in the gasoline tax: “He was thinking of saving the planet; citizens affected were thinking of making it to the end of the month. Oh!”
In American presidential politics, the first, second and third things which thinking Democrats want are to beat Donald Trump, to beat Trump and to beat Trump.
There is a problem with the two old men leading the way for Democrats. Joe Biden wants to make nice with the establishment, and his silly remarks about the benign intentions of China demonstrate that he just doesn’t get it.
Bernie Sanders understands the danger of the Chinese destruction of American jobs, but Bernie wants to blow up our system, rather than reform and improve it.
We can neither afford the complacency of Biden nor risk the bomb-throwing mentality of Sanders.
If we want to beat Trump, we can and must attack his corruption and his disdain for democracy, but we can propose meaningful, incremental change in the distribution of wealth in America. Most working-class and working-poor Americans just want to make it “to the end of the month.”
Whether the candidate to spread that message is Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris or someone else, it surely is not Joe or Bernie.
6
Elizabeth Warren is not advocating for incremental change. She’s closer to Bernie in her positions. Read much?
3
@JJ
Yes, I do “read much.” Equally as important, jj,
I read carefully.
The Warren plan to tax the wealth of the very rich was announced primarily to spark a debate in which the ultra-rich would be forced to defend their ability to avoid income taxes even before the Trump cuts. But it is not a new idea, and it is incremental.
The proposal is for a 2% annual assessment on wealth over $50 million and a surcharge of 1% on wealth over $1 billion. So, a family with $60 million would pay an extra $200,000.
A number of economists have praised the idea, and leaders of large corporations, like Jamie Dimon of Chase, have criticized the wealth and income disparity in the U.S.
Many experts say that the top 1/10 of 1% of American families control almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Most Americans, jj, find that obscene.
If course we can handle the Sanders approach. It’s the establishment that wants you to think we can’t. And apparently you’ve fallen for their line, book, line and sinker.
Interesting word, "aberration." That's what many people thought of Obama during his first term, including the Romney campaign. We saw where that led. A voting bloc of 50 million + people cannot be an aberration. Biden is known for his gaffes, and "aberration" has to be one of them. Still, just because he has rubbed elbows with the Davos crowd in the past does not mean he is incapable of putting together a winning campaign and leading the country in the direction of something it needs to be led toward.
1
I'm a conservative evangelical, intending to vote for Trump, and I find myself in agreement with much of what Cohen says here. It is only when he gets to the bottom of his Op-Ed and comes down in favor of Elizabeth Warren does he miss the main points. Elizabeth Warren's problem (like most Democratic candidates) is being hopelessly wedded to identity politics. For reasons which escape me, the Democratic Party and its supporters can never see the obvious corrosive effect of identity politics in American life generally, or their chances in elections. Every single day, on Fox News outlets and Breitbart, leftish identity politics are singled out and ridiculed. Cohen is right about Davos, and right about Brexit, but fails to acknowledge that Trump stood alone in confronting the 'free trade' ideas that benefited the Davos crowd. If Elizabeth Warren wanted to listen, she might start listening to what that irreplaceable component of the Democratic coalition, the Catholic Church, has to say about abortion, marriage and family, but that won't happen. Taxing billionaires isn't the answer to that problem. So Cohen presents the economic component of the modern political argument pretty clearly, but never understands the rest of the equation.
3
How can a supposed evangelical support an immoral, lying man like Trump? Please explain how he displays the tenets of your faith. Please explain how anyone who supposedly embraces the teaching of Christ could vote for Trump.
1
@Tom Wolpert -"Warren's problem (like most Democratic candidates) is being hopelessly wedded to identity politics..."
And Trump isn't? I always wonder how religious people can vote for an immoral liar who really doesn't believe in religion but then again that's the why Trump is a successful con man.
@Tom Wolpert
The Catholic Church has already accepted divorce and homosexuality. It will soon "accept" abortion, mostly because it cannot do anything about it; promoting contraception might have worked, but it is too late now.
Mr Cohen's article shows clearly that things have changed and Mr. Trump is not an aberration. Elsewhere in the paper, economists marvel at the low level of unemployment with concomitant low inflation; things have changed. Yet the way politics is presented to the public is at least a hundred years old. It is always reported as a impersonal race to take seats, control the House, or gain power. When really the voter mostly doesn't care about all that, but rather what will this election do for me? Perhaps it is time for a change in reporting too? More about what a
Warren election might do to the price of eggs, or how Sanders might impact gas prices, and less about a rather childish pursuit of red or blue maps.
5
This is exactly, EXACTLY, what I have been thinking and saying for the last three years. Why don’t the Democrats understand and knowledge this?! Stop trying to undermine Trump’s presidency and figure out how to provide a less coarse version of the same agenda. It’s what the people want. And I’m the “highly educated coastal elite”.
10
@KitKat
"... provide a less coarse version of the same agenda."
For this to happen, the Democratic Party will have to rid itself of its Republican wing; that wing can then rejoin the Republican Party and restore it. We would then again have one conservative and one progressive party, and we might even manage to get money out of politics.
1
Instead of picking every candidate apart and declaring them unfit for office why don't we let the process work itself out. Liberals and Democrats have a history of killing their own. Let's show some tolerance and acceptance for each other. I love your articles Mr. Cohen, however, I feel you are succumbing to the temptation to draw conclusions before you need to and dividing people. Every candidate is learning how to speak to their audience at the time. How they communicate and connect is the challenge they face. It is also the challenge we all face. We are confronted with a dictatorial president and political party right now. How do we deal with that?
1
Biden is first in the polls today because of nostalgia for better times (only marginally better for the average person) and name recognition. His candidacy has yet to be tested. So far, his position seems to be the same as Hillary's, "I'm not Trump."
That isn't going to cut it.
If you aren't Trump, who are you? Where will you lead us? Who will benefit?
Bernie is right; Warren is right. The elites of both parties have sold us down the river to the oligarchs. THAT is the problem of which Trump is the symptom.
We deserve better. We are not going to settle for less.
10
I don't get the impression Democratic voters are looking for change by electing another Clinton-Obama liberal Republican president. They want real change not corporate appeasement and establishment status quo. This is what Biden represents.
7
As always, a most provocative op-ed with lots to think about.
It's clear that all candidates have weaknesses and some will stand out more than others. I've been tending toward Biden on sheer humanity aspects as his contrast to Trump is currently the strongest. The chord he hit for me was the decency one - and we hunger for that now more than ever. Mr. Cohen gives Trump too much credit for innovation - he never thought he'd be President and has no thinking process about this country. He fell into it - an aberration ,a displacement in our history. It needs correction even if we have to go back to another time to achieve it. We must defeat Trump and his fascistic crowd at all costs.
4
Trump is not anti-Davos as much as he is anti-rational. This column would make a lot more sense if indeed, Trump "listened" to people or Trump "understood" something. Fact is, he doesn't read, doesn't absorb data, doesn't explain his whims in rational terms. The man is only about self-aggrandizement with impunity.
Yes, anti-rationalists are always loved by the under-educated, the fearful and the raciest elements of a society. But in the end their unreasonableness almost always ends in war or catastrophe. I'm afraid we're headed for either one or both.
7
I get that the point of this op-ed is the real world’s reaction to the Davos Man meme, but I feel like someone ought to defend Hilary Clinton at least a bit. I’m not sure that she didn’t listen as much as she wasn’t listened to. She talked about policies and ideas, and if you ever visited her website she backed it all up, while the media reported e-mails and pantsuits. She won the popular vote but was cast as a loser because of close margins in places like Wisconsin.
Hilary Clinton lost the presidency because in certain precincts in the country voters were never going to listen to her. It could be because her last name is Clinton, and those voters would much rather vote for Stormy’s midnight lover over the wife of the man whom they believe dishonored the office of the presidency. It could be because she was a woman and they just didn’t believe that a woman should be president. It could be because the solutions she offered were no match for the bromides Trump peddled. (Coal miners still haven’t seen their jobs come back.) But I don’t think it was ever because she didn’t listen. It was because when she spoke some people decided that they heard something different.
14
@M
Why?
@M. — Clinton offered nothing to workers except to tell them they needed to go back to school. And that’s a good part of the reason workers didn’t vote for her. She offered nothing to millennials, which is why they didn’t vote for her. People were listening. They just didn’t hear anything useful from her.
Bernie and Elizabeth as the ticket. Balance, passion, father and mother to a new age, not a failed return to the past.
9
@Tony, amen to that!
1
What if the smart and capable Biden “evolves” (as they say in politico-speak)? A sobered up ancien régime might have done less harm and more good than the gang that stormed the bastille.
1
The U.S. China Relations Act of 2000 facilitated China's entry into the World Trade Organization. It did not force US companies to send their manufacturing operations (and 3 million jobs) to China. It was cheap labor that made it more profitable. So don't go blaming Joe Biden for that fiasco. Trump and his daughter have profited from China as much as any other company that turned their backs on America workers. It's interesting that Trump no longer talks about the great rebirth of American manufacturing, and bringing overseas jobs back to the country, because it is not happening.
11
@Rob Senator Joe Biden voted for the U.S. China Relations Act in 2000, a bill that was negotiated by the Clinton administration and signed by Bill Clinton into law. At the time, Chinese factory workers earned one-tenth of what American factory workers earned per year. The bill was a clear give-away, a ticket to legally offshore jobs on a massive scale, by the centrists in the Democratic Party to their corporate backers. So, yes, I do blame Joe Biden for this ill-conceived law. The Democratic Party can do better than choose this hack and corporate shill as its nominee.
8
@ Rob I’m sure you know that economics works through a system of incentives which indeed “forces” profit-seeking entities to find the cheapest means of production. This is the basis of our capitalist economic system. However, our government can alter the package of incentives and thusly impact the choices that companies make (such as where to manufacture goods).
2
Trump made a lot of promises to blue-collar voters, but most of them were lies made simply to get votes. If that is not obvious now, it's largely because the media continues to act like the promises were not lies. They keep saying that Trump "spoke to them" where the Dems "spoke down to them". This is simply not the case, but keeps being reported as history.
I hate that the GOP can represent the upper class and somehow this gets completely ignored, but the Democrats are constantly warned that they somehow don't deserve the blue collar vote. I don't get it.
A public education strategy is needed. I think that the Democrats could, if they desired, include in their campaign strategy (1) a detailed examination, including videos, of Trump making his absurd promises, and then displaying how those promises were ignored, and even violated, after the election and (2) a detailed discussion of the more left-leaning Democratic policies and why folks need not fear them.
8
@Mitch4949
Good ideas, but people don't analyze facts and make rational decisions. People vote for the person who makes the feel good. Period.
@Mitch4949
The accusation about "lies" is used so frequently against Trump it's now meaningless. His critics ignore that he is actually the first president to do what he says he'll do.
And, for the record, it's about much more than a "wall". It's about rational border controls. Trump has delivered. He's also delivered on tax, regulatory and prison reforms. And on judicial placements.
@AACNY Accusations of lying would not be meaningless if you see a video of Trump lying, followed by documented facts that show that he actually did the opposite of what he said. For example, recently I've seen a video of Trump on the campaign saying he would raise taxes on the rich. That's right...remember that? "I know these hedge fund managers...they won't like me very much when I get in...they're doing just fine". This video needs to be shown, along with charts showing what really happened. So he has NOT delivered on his promise...in fact he did the opposite. "Tax reform" is not what happened and you know it.
Remember the scene where Trump asked the GOP and the Dems to come up with immigration reform? "I'll sign anything you bring to me". They then worked together and came up with a pretty good *bipartisan* immigration bill. Trump would've signed it if only Rush and Coulter didn't intervene. So let's admit that "rational border controls" were turned down by Trump...he did not deliver.
A small number of blue-collar voters really care about his "judicial placements". It's jobs and health care that they're interested in.
Not to "talk down" to the blue-collar Trump voters, but unfortunately, they need this to be spelled out to them in very basic, easy to understand bites. It can be done.
1
"He could take on the China that had put millions of people to work on the cheap in its factories and so, from the Midwest to the British Midlands, de-industrialized much of the West."
Still peddling this story, are we?
Yes, offshoring cost Americans a lot of jobs. But those jobs aren't "coming back," whether Trump knows it and is pretending not to, or if he's really that uninformed and believes his own baloney.
More than 80% of private jobs in the USA are in the service sector. That's what we have now: a service economy. The issues connected with that reality, like the fact that the average factory worker makes more than $25 an hour while the average retail worker makes less than $18 an hour, are what we need to address today.
Another inescapable fact is that machines have been and will continue to replace human beings in the performance of tasks that used to create jobs. One hardly needed the prescience of Jules Verne to see this coming; yet not only did the government not prepare for this inevitability -- politicians like Trump and, yes, Bernie Sanders rail about jobs being created overseas while Americans are laid off and claim: "That's going to end!" So said Bernie in a campaign speech in 2016, just as Trump was saying the same at every campaign appearance. And they were both promoting a lie, whether they believed it or not.
About 50% of the manufacturing jobs lost between 2001 and 2013 were due to automation. That's not "going to end."
Let's face reality.
13
@ MisterE please explain to me exactly what it is that makes it impossible for jobs to be brought back to the US. Also please explain why you think it’s ok that a very large part of your country’s population had to trade down from $60 an hour jobs to $15 an hour jobs so that people like Jeff Bezos could make $140 billion for himself.
3
@KitKat
I share your general outlook on this issue, but please consider a broader view. When globalization ramped up, we immediately outsourced our textile industry because that's unskilled labor. We get cheap socks and China gets to lift a million people out of abject poverty. That isn't a bad thing in itself--what makes it bad is when the standard of living of people here decreases, and that includes things beyond suppressed wages. It includes things like losing world class affordable education and decent affordable health care. We've been squeezed on far more than wages as a result of our "unfettered capitalism" craze.
I don't really want to make socks here again--what I want is for the obscene wealth constantly accruing to billionaires like the Walton family because of the profits they make on those imported cheap socks to go back into our society instead of into their pockets and off-shore accounts. I don't think paying people $60 an hour to make socks here again is very forward looking, especially since automation is an unstoppable force on the horizon. We are a service/skilled labor/knowledge based economy now, and we need to pay $60/hr for those jobs and provide the training to do them. The billionaires including the Davos crowd simply won't allow it--that's our biggest problem.
3
@KitKat
If you didn't understand what I thought was clearly articulated in my comment, read it again.
Also, you say: “a very large part of your country’s population had to trade down from $60 an hour jobs to $15 an hour jobs."
Who told you this? Notably, you say "your country," so I have to assume you don't live in the USA.
A person earning $60 an hour and working a 40-hour week would earn $124,800 a year.
In 1990, according to the Social Security Administration, there were 134,396 Americans earning between $120,000.00 and $129,999.99.
In 2017, there were 1,759,265 Americans earning in that wage range.
In neither case did that wage range represent the earnings of "a very large part of [my] country's population." But there were 13 times as many people earning wages within that range in 2017 as there were in 1990.
So, again, who told you this? Was it perhaps some raving Brexiteer? Whoever it was, you might advise your misinformant that he/she doesn't know what he/she is talking about.
1
I think we're skipping over the equivalent US response on the left. In 2016, that meant Bernie Sanders.
The revolution against the elites failed on the left in 2016. As we've seen, the failure was orchestrated and intentional. Democrats put their thumb on the scale with the full support of the Davos crowd. Biden represents these same powerful interests in 2020. They are trying to accomplish the same thing again while pretending something else is happening. The familiar patterns are already present.
Secure polling that says Biden is popular whether the polling is accurate or not. Roll out a extremely polished PR campaign. Try to put skeletons in the closet to rest. And most importantly, attack the main competition on their own ground: fundraising.
You really think Biden just happened to exceed Sanders' early fundraising totals by accident? That was entirely staged. The Party of Davos then uses their pre-orchestrated talking points to turn around and give Biden earned media in the major news circles claiming he's the front runner and the inevitable choice to win the election.
If this all feels very much like Clinton, it should. Biden is using the exact same playbook. The only difference is the Midwest is now considered competitive.
I wish Cohen were wrong but he's summarized my thoughts on Biden perfectly. The question is whether the left can finally get that neoliberal monkey off their back.
20
@Andy
The problem with conspiracy theories is that too much energy and time is wasted chasing windmills.
@Andy, the masters of universe who control both parties seem to be the same, deep pocketed folks.
1
Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin. They both embody visceral appeal to the white working class and talk the talk, but their true allegiance is to the plutocracy.
Just examine their records. Trump has a history of stiffing and swindling contractors and exploiting bankruptcy laws to preserve his hoard. Biden has consistently voted for legislation that favors banks.
If Trump is re-elected, it will be more tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy, deregulation, opening up of protected lands for oil and natural gas exploration, and xenophobic drivel.
If by some chance Biden is elected President, it will be duplicitous nepotism and status quo politics.
Let us not forget Biden successfully campaigned for Republican Fred Upton in Michigan last fall—for $200,000. And let us not forget the shenanigans with his son Hunter.
Shades of credit card Joe. Sold to the highest bidder. Davos anyone?
Give Elizabeth and Bernie some credit.
Or Tulsi and Pete.
14
@MS
I just love seeing how informed people are now willing to expose the corruption in American politics.
We all know how corrupt Trump and his gang are, but somehow or other, the self-serving Democratic political machine, (I call them the modern-day Boss Tweed Tammany Hall political machine of the NYC 1850's infamy), has been able to get away with hiding its true colors, for a very long time, and the references to Hunter Biden, and his father's assistance in the Ukraine multi-million dollar making operations, is a case in point.
From the NY Times -
"The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general."
Joe Biden orchestrated the prosecutor generals' removal ..., for his son's benefit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html
See Vanity Fair report as well -
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/biden-ukrainian-gas-company
1
@MS
"Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin"? That's absolutely incorrect. Have you really reviewed Biden's accomplishments over his long public service career? Apparently not.
@Michael
The burden is on you to make the case.
"Apparently not" does not constitute an argument.
Of course, if you do not elaborate your position it is unassailable.
The most important battles are for the Senate and the House. Without victories there it won't much matter whether it's Biden or Warren, Sanders or Harris, they will be obstructed. So who can cut through the demagoguery, the exploitation of the fissures between the social and economic justice wings, and between both of the pejoratively hissed words liberal and socialist, to create a big tent with a platform that appeals to the American people, not just in the NE and CA but to the rust belt and the flourishing areas of the New South?
Neither Rome nor Washington will change in a day. Biden could well be the screen behind which a progressive movement will flourish. Like most politicians he will follow the crowd.
2
An essential tactic of the Trump regime is its willingness — its near gleeful willingness — to ignore and upend long-held norms of accepted behavior. Politeness, honor, truth, unity, empathy, the rule of law are all seen as impediments to political success in Trump’s world. Yes, he literally could shoot and kill someone on 5th Avenue and not suffer the consequences. Trump has transformed the Mueller Report into a badge of honor for Russian meddling and stiff-arming the Congress for daring to threaten impeachment.
And what is the response of the Democratic Party leaders and candidates? Playing within the rules, following legal procedures, and tepidly creeping along, afraid of their own shadows (Sanders and Warren the exceptions). The House is still debating whether to subpoena the highly partisan, dissembling Attorney General. Still.
Biden is a product and a meme of Democratic hesitation in the face of tyranny. He and all the others look for guidance from polls and news media coverage. The Trump regime exists on division and divisiveness. Trump personifies right-wing authoritarianism. Biden and his Party are fumbling around in search of the courage to take on the bully.
8
I strongly agree with Roger Cohen. Mr. Trump if not producing jobs and a real surge in manufacturing at least says he will try to save jobs and industry.
Joe Biden, and I support him fails to grasp that Americans are sick and tired of seeing their jobs and industries move off-shore and got to Mexico, China and elsewhere. The Democratic elites simply don't get.
I have written to Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders trying in vain, desperately telling them that the issues are jobs, jobs and jobs. Our communities are filled with people who no longer are even seeking jobs and those numbers are kept from the jobs reports. We've created service jobs and other menial work but not meaningful industrial jobs and research and development for new jobs.
The infrastructure of America is falling apart. Teachers are in revolt. We don't make shoes or sneakers or textiles or any apparel in the U.S. We tried and failed to make TVs but we've lost our institutional knowledge of how to do so.
Trump gets it. He appeals to the unemployed factory workers, miners and everyone else left behind.
If the Democrats are unable to see what Trump acknowledges is a threat to America they will lose the upcoming election. People want full employment in real jobs with real wages. Not service jobs and sitting at a desk pushing paper or staring at a computer. Trump gets it. Biden and the rest of the Democrats still don't. Biden must wake up. We need manufacturing research and U.S. good paying jobs. We need it now.
5
@Jay
There is a desperate need of people in the trades. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters are needed, yet we no longer offer Vocational Education in our schools. We need to include education in these vocations. Not everyone wants or needs to go to College. You should not need a College degree to have a middle class life. This is where the so called elites have failed us.
You can make a good living working in the post office.
these are the alternatives we should look at.
Nurses and doctors are sorely needed, as well as hospital technicians, etc. For these positions you need a degree.
US Corporations will continue to outsource jobs. If the tax system penalized Corporations for doing this, then these jobs would not be as easily transferred over seas.
Trump and the Republican party will never penalize Corporations for outsourcing jobs.
There is some hope that the Democrats will figure it out.
4
“Trump gets it”??? All trump* “gets” is that people are angry and frustrated, and he supplied them with a tantrum and a worse collection of oligarchs than the Davos gang. Puh-leez.
In politics, ideas count, yes, even revolutionary ideas, but it is feelings that usually win out. What a majority of Americans feel at this moment is a desperate need for decency and stability in their government. Joe Biden can fill that need.
Roger Cohen's high-sounding calls to revolution may have some appeal on the far left and far right—the extreme ends of the spectrum—but I believe the center will hold, and that is not what the center wants.
We’ve had periods of excessive capitalism before, and survived them. This election is not about a great historical fissure, but about people—a point that first-time Democratic candidates running in conservative districts proved in 2018.
Joe Biden, whatever his limitations, is a people person, and that is exactly what we need in these exigent times. It's Joe Biden whom Trump fears the most, and for that very reason.
Trump's tweet storm of some 60 tweets after Biden won endorsement from the firefighters’ union speaks for itself. Whatever you may think of Trump, no one has ever accused him of poor political instincts.
So let’s not do to Joe, what was done to Hillary—high-minded attacks from liberal bastions even before the candidate got off the ground. Let’s wait and see what Joe has to say, how he fares in the debates.
For my money, the best ticket for our times would be Biden-Warren, a perfect match of personality and policy. Despite what some on the left say about Biden, I believe they both care deeply about people.
11
@Ron Cohen
Well said. A Biden/Warren ticket would be amazing.
@Ron Cohen
Trump is not afraid of Joe or any other Democrat who is running. He is to self-involved and arrogant to be fearful. He just wants to put labels on people. The problem is that that most of the Republicans who were running for the 2016 primary did not know how to shut him up and the press ate it all up. So Trump got all the coverage.
The best thing that Democratic Primary candidates can do is ignore him and stick to the issues that matter, even to past Trump voters. That is the way to beat Trump.
1
@Michael
Thank you, Michael.
1
China will not run the world, why? First, China is disliked by most of its neighbors. Two, China has significant internal problems (aging population, unrest, farmers migrating to cities, etc., etc.,).
One thing good about China, writers can hold China to prove their "good, bad and the ugly" point they are making.
Yes,Trump gives a voice to the disenfranchised who are not doing well financially. And it feels good--at least temporarily--to tear down the current structure to let the "elites" know that the disenfranchised aren't going to take it any more. The problem is that while the old system, structures and mores lay tattered on the ground, there is nothing to replace them. So, things don't get better for those who were left out, they get worse. Trump will do fine. But those he says he represents won't. Has anyone heard about the new wonderful, cheaper, comprehensive health care plan that will replace Obamacare if the Supreme Court declares the current system illegal? Neither have I and it won't be pretty when that reality hits the ground.
3
Speaking to the people in terms they understand and can relate to will go a long way toward determining who wins. Pointing out to people that the way income inequality has widened resulted from the wealthy taking away what you previously had and then blaming you for your own demise. All this time, have the wealthy not gotten richer despite social security, despite Medicare, despite Medicaid, despite food stamps, and employer sponsored (not given) health insurance, despite the greatest recession in our lifetimes? How have you fared through all this? That is the discussion that needs to be had. The wealthy need to recognize that the workers are preparing their torches to once again march in the streets. Either the wealthy do the right, patriotic thing and share with those that helped them amass that wealth or it will be forced upon them to do so. Trump wants you to think he is on your side, but the reality paints a different picture. And just remember your tax cut is temporary, the wealthy's is permanent. And what's the first thing that will blamed if inflation increases? Wage increases. These are the kind of discussions that need to be held. I believe the democratic field will be narrowed after the debates by the voters figuring out who speaks their language.
8
@Walking Man
I wish the reality of how a presidential candidate is selected was as straightforward and fair as you describe.
My more skeptical guess is the democratic candidate already has been designated within the party by a small number of powerful people’s priorities and values and will be marketed to us as promoting better life for the average person.
7
@sherry
I would point out that the Republicans had preordained Jeb as the heir apparent before the 2016 election and Trump would never get past the first debate. And...... The waiter may try to get you to order the special on the menu, but that doesn't mean you will. What is certain is if you order the calves liver, never having had it , but you heard it's really good and you spit it back on to the plate in disgust, you will never, ever order it again. So the next time you dine there, you will go with the tried and true even if there are other things on the menu you have never tried. And when the waiter says "We have calves liver tonight", your response is "Not a chance". (My apologies to those who love calves liver)
You couldn’t be more right!!
It's a little early to speculate about which candidate has the best chance to beat Donald Trump. Voter's perceptions of candidates are what will determine who wins and loses the presidential election. At this time the perceptions of Joe Biden are very favorable, and, in contrast, an increasing number of people see the Donald Trump negatively.
2
Perhaps the best column I have read on the political reality of the insanity that is presently our politics. There are a number of Democratic presidential candidates who possess the agility and integrity to counter the hatefulness that is the modern republican party.
Will the Democratic Party members pick the right one out of the pack this primary season?
4
In 2016 anybody with eyes and an open-mind could see that Donald and Bernie were the people's choices...one a true populist and one a fraud. Hillary with all her experience and knowledge as well as the Democratic Party establishment were blind and tone deaf to this.
My fear is that Joe Biden, if elected, does not have the commitment and passion to address the inequities that are fueling populist movements. And this could pave the way for a more competent authoritarian.
13
What Mr. Cohen misses is that a candidate's ability to defeat Trump trumps everything else. The policies anyone may suggest and the virtue of those proposals pale in comparison to getting Mr. Trump out of the White House. That is job one. The great moderate bulge will swing to Biden. Remember, it's electoral votes and swings states are not going to be swinging far to the left. Unless another seasoned moderate can do better, Joe is the best person. We know Joe has some baggage and he makes unforced errors(China). Who can do better?
8
When the stoats and weasels are trashing Toad Hall, and Joe is the best one to drive them out, so be it. Give us the best next-in-line hope as VP, but clear them out!
@dudley thompson
I fully agreed until you got to the Biden part. He's only in this race because of incontinent reporting on early polls. The polls at this stage always favor the known, whatever their weaknesses, over the not-yet-quite-known. My answer to "Who can do better?" is don't confine yourself entirely to the current field. How about a John Warner-Amy Klobuchar ticket?
Ancien regime? It invokes notions from the French Revolution. A lot of words, some good insights, some not so good. A student of revolutions would observe that they are usually overthrown by reactions. Revolution and reaction, the phrase recurs in book titles. Trumpism is itself a reaction led by an old man, con man yes. Biden is an old man leading a democratic restoration, of an earlier order, yes, but not a bad one for that.
4
I think the GOP is hoping Joe Biden prevails in the Democratic primaries. Like HRC, Joe Biden would not generate any enthusiasm among the young or come close to generating the support among minorities that Obama did. The result will be down ballot victories for the GOP and another four years of Donald Trump. The Davos plutocrats and DNC donors, though, win either way.... which is why we are reading articles about why Sanders and Warren "can't win" and ideas like Medicare for All can't work.
27
Liz is awesome. She is a close deep listener. She knows both sides really well, having grown up conservative. Same with Bernie. He is independent minded. He truly believes in what he says. They both have a vision for the country which is uplifting the masses, not just the wealthy elite. They want to pay attention to things that matter most education health care jobs wages. Their visions transcend cultural wars, does not matter what religion gender ethnicity race sexual orientation..what they care about is human dignity human values of compassion empathy hard work and justice, for all.
Just how they are able to shepherd the masses and align themselves to their message, is what we have to watch, as it unfolds. Our kids got a glimpse of this during Bernie's previous run. This time we asked them what do they think of Biden, they said no thanks, it is still Bernie for them. They see Biden for who he is, an establishment democrat beholden to big money big industry big defense big pharma, who will repeat the same weakness the party has embraced.
We love Liz Warren deeply, as much as Bernie. It is possible to do both.
21
Cohen's exposing Biden's warts may be warranted, but of all the Democratic hopefuls, Biden stands the best chance of winning the election because he would capture the purple states Trump captured in 2016. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would more likely go with Biden over far left of center candidates such as Harris, Sanders, Warren. It's a given that blue states will remain blue and red states will remain red, so it's down to those four states, and Biden will not make the same mistake as Hillary. He will campaign heavily in each of them.
5
@nzierler, so will any democrat and all democrats. If they have a sliver of a brain left, democrats will learn from their mistakes of having lost a huge election that was guaranteed to be theirs to win. Instead of campaigning in these "purple states", formerly blue, Hillary went to CA to raise obscene amounts of money from Hollywood, entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, as though raising money for the democrats would somehow ensure their big win! Hillary had highly paid consultants running her campaign. All kinds of pollsters, political pundits who placed her at 85% chance of winning and why would she not win when Trump was such an awful candidate, they said and she ran on that assumption. How could these smart political gurus miss something so obvious? It is precisely because they collectively refused to acknowledge Bernie's message, his presence, dismissing it as a pied piper phenomenon! But those people in purple states did listen to Bernie. When the DNC did not include him on the ticket, they simply bypassed Hillary and voted for Trump.
It is at their own risk if the democrats remain tone deaf. They ought to have an ear close to the ground in these 4 states. It has to be a door to door campaign of foot soldiers, knocking on each door, not leaving it to robo calls or TV advertisements. They need human to human contact and visibility.
3
@nzierler
It is not "far left" to think people deserve a living wage,
good health care, and a good education.
3
This is one of the best political columns that I have read this year. Of course Biden is leading in the polls. He has been running for president since 1988. So he has more name recognition. The logic of how the media covers elections is that Biden will get a lot of coverage from reporters hoping to be at his side when he gets into office. To keep interest in the race the media will promote a succession of bright shiny new things as his opposition. This is how they put Trump into office. In 2016 they wasted a lot of words on Jeb! because he was related to two presidents and Trump got a lot of coverage because he had big rallies saying things that addressed the issues voters cared about, which, by the way, CNN broadcast live.
Thank goodness for Bernie. By running against the Davos party and its acolytes in 2016 he developed a core base of supporters who have given him the second rank in the polls. Tired of that the media keep promoting shiny new candidates, Beto and Mayor Pete among them. The problem is that Sanders is too ideological for most people and he is as old as Biden. The conclusion is that Warren is the best candidate to defeat Trump in 2020. She is doing so by putting forth detailed policies to end the rule of our economy by the Davos crowd. By eschewing their contributions right from the start she is walking the talk.
20
Nothing constructive to add other than, “excellent piece!” I love Joe and will support him wholeheartedly if he becomes the nominee but, win or loose, we on the left need to project a bright future, not a stale, complicit past.
5
I believe it is much simpler. Listen to Biden. His stream of speech is laden with corrections, missteps, slip-ups, etc. It is not his time anymore. He speaks to an old generation. A good man-but not the man of the hour.
24
I don't see Trump's election as a revolution. Rather it was a recoil from rapid change and instability, perceived or actual. The nature of the election was clear as early as May-June 2016. The winning candidate would need to address economic uncertainty and social unease at a personal and concrete level, especially in the Midwest and in Pennsylvania. It needed to be a change election, but Democrats were already locked into a peaceable Obama legacy candidate, who was also a Clinton and a woman. She was a Midwesterner but had converted to flyover politics.
6
The problem is not China. It comes from within. We are our own worst enemy. Greed by some, eviscerating the middle class, not investing in infrastructure and education, ignoring health needs of our citizens, and politically manipulating a tax structure to skew the many for a few, leads us to the condition we're in. Fix it--don't blame others!
25
Hughly instructive!
Trump does not only ride a wave of anti-elitism, but also very effectively of nationalism. In Europe even a consummate demagogue like Trump could not run a successful campaign against a"Party of Davos", but the new nationalisms in almost all of Europe are a magic base for the "little" Trumps. After Brexit they advocate other exits. No wonder that Brannon has moved to Europe to repeat his success as an idea-giver. Trump himself has made it very clear thta the partnership with Europe for him is osolete. He feels, not without cause, that America Alone is more powerful and unhampered that America First. One can only hope that Trump, after hi reelection and having lavislshly satisfied his ego, will be conserned more with his image in history.
2
"...listening is critical. Trump got out there; he listened better than Hillary Clinton."
Your column was respectable, Mr. Cohen until the above statement. Trump is incapable of listening to anyone except his own voice and can't see anyone beyond his own reflection. I cannot think of a less empathetic individual. When he "got out there" he used racist and misogynistic dog whistles pandering to those Mrs. Clinton aptly referred to as the deplorable members of his base. I hold Ms. Warren in high regard but fear she is not capable of galvanizing an electorate any more than a wonkish professor lecturing students Trump has already defined Ms Warren before the campaigning has begun. "Crazy Bernie" would be a gift to Trump and Republicans who would have a field day explaining socialism to the poorly educated among Trump's base. Ancient Joe seems the most electable at this early stage. A lot can happen between now and November 2020 Trump has zero self restraint and listens to no one. One can only hope that Democrat investigations might ultimately lead to the end of Trump's reign of terror. Or maybe, just maybe enough of the electorate will ultimately tire of Donald Trump outrageous and vulgar behavior or his thousands of documented lies stop being "normal" or entertaining. When that renaissance of coal mining jobs fails to materialize or health care becomes inaccessible to more Americans o the Chinese tariffs bankrupt American farms and businesses, will Trump's base revolt?
8
I feel that the one best positioned to defeat Trump is Trump himself.
The man is so clueless, and his sense of entitlement (as in what he can get away with) so unlimited, that he will eventually repel even his craven and depraved Republican protectors.
However, rational America cannot relax and trust that Trump will implode on his own or be substantially damaged by impeachment proceedings. . Maximum effort should be focused to defeat Trump electorally in 2020, and his Republican enablers should reap the punishment they have earned.
5
Yes the Bidens, Obamas, Clintons were seduced by Wall Street and the moneyed elite, and blinded by them, but Biden does have roots in a kinder gentler time. Trump's anger based appeal has disgusted many, his lies and fawning over Putin and Kim are unseemly and disquieting. Warren and Sanders offer strong ideas and dynamic approaches to the Trump syndrome, but Americans are exhausted, by now, with the endless tug of war. It seems possible that offering a calmer, inoffensive, unremarkable candidate as an alternative to perpetually in-your-face, corrosive Trumpist republicanism may be effective.
3
Most people who voted for Trump don't know much about Davos. Hillary Clinton was a Davos regular and supposed next president, leader of the corporatist Democratic elite. China was the global corporate paradise for off shoring manufacturing. Over time China was let into the WTO and allowed to continue their stealing of intellectual property and under cutting western economies. Trump and Bannon's message was turn up the hate. His racist message that anxious resentful white folks were being sold out for profit by international corporations resonated. Along with the anti immigrant message that they bring crime and disease with them. Though he didn't win the popular vote he won three crucial states by narrow margins and took the electoral college. The plutocrat populist who is the poster child of Thomas Piketty's thesis of mind boggling concentration of wealth at the top. So the GOP passes an unbelievably generous corporate tax cut and Trump gets 100 million. In the world of Bezos that is walking around money. Citizens United proved the US Supreme Court's fealty to the capitalist aristocracy. Which as Piketty notes is not far removed from the levels of wealth controlled by the WW1 era royalty. The Trump GOP are going to change inheritance taxes to make sure the ruling houses maintain their position of wealth and power from generation to generation.
1
Trump isn't brilliant. Trump is just doing and being the only thing he can be, which is 100% self-interested, self-absorbed Trump. But he has struck electoral gold by behaving badly and smashing things up when that turns out to have deep (if not wide) popular appeal. Eventually the country will wake up after this orgy of destruction and this President won't be looking brilliant then.
Where I do agree with Mr Cohen, however, is that lessons must be learned and returning to the past is not an option, and also that Elizabeth Warren is the most serious and worthy Presidential candidate by miles. She has been thinking hard about the problems which ail America and how to fix them for years, indeed decades. She is also tough and honest, both qualities now desperately needed.
5
Absolutely. Sadly though, Elizabeth Warren cannot win. She puts her foot in her mouth. Bernie Sanders is the best bet. He has an enormous following and he is the real deal. He is the only candidate who is not in fact a Democrat, and not tainted by the neoliberalism and elitism of the Democratic Party, and not associated with their absurd culture war.
7
@Anne, can you give us examples of Liz putting her foot in her mouth? She is highly self aware and very deliberate and cautious, intellectual with a deep empathy for human conditions. Educate us kindly.
1
Put in the context of this present global political paradigm, Roger Cohen is correct: Trump is not an aberration. He embodies the new norm - which psychologically is not "normal." But we can not overlook the silent rumbling from thousands, which is that of discontent, of discouragement, and of anger. For if we were to juxtapose Mr. Trump with historical expectations re the POTUS, he is indeed an abnormality, an outlier on the US's statistical graph. He is defying justice and the laws of the land. He has no code of ethics, not at all. We can not even say he is immoral because immorality implies that one has a soul, a conscience. He is indeed amoral. There is a difference. For his own insatiable narcissism, his "genius" of reading the dark sides of people's character has gotten himself where he is today. He has tapped into the bigotry, racism, and fanatical interpretation of Christianity of too many of this nation's people. He has with alarming success delivered to them. But this can not sustain itself. Perhaps, Biden is not the correct choice. Perhaps, he is too old and a bit of an anachronism. That being said, do not dismiss this new Silent Majority which is bound and determined to rid itself of the rot in DC.
3
@Kathy Lollock
“But we can not overlook the silent rumblings from thousands, which is that of discontent, of discouragement, and of anger.”
They also have a lower life expectancy. Why? A man mentioned “fix it” above. Well, take the opioid crisis — did they ever bother to fix the source of the people’s pain?