Aside from his global fame and his love affair with soft-serve ice cream, Joe Biden’s biggest calling card at this budding stage of the presidential race is the mushy notion of “electability.” Biden, the former vice president, isn’t outright saying that he would be the best foil against Donald Trump next year, but he’s laying it on thick, mugging for the cameras in Iowa diners and bragging to a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh that the road back to the White House runs straight through working-class Pennsylvania. Biden’s home turf. “Shot-and-a-beer” territory, as Richard Ben Cramer called it.

The imagery is not subtle. Biden wants Democrats to know that he and he alone is best positioned to reclaim the Upper Midwest after Trump’s Electoral College burglary in 2016. With Biden, you know what you’re in for: a tested statesman with populist charm who can clean up Trump’s malarkey on day one. He can go to the Hague one day, and then show up at Sturgis the next. And folks, if you’re not getting the message, his allies will give it to you loud and clear: Biden. Can. Win.

“This is do-or-die, and Joe Biden is the best candidate to go against Trump in November,” said Dick Harpootlian, a state senator in South Carolina who recently hosted a Biden fund-raiser in Columbia. “Would Joe Biden be running if he thought any of these other folks could beat Donald Trump? No way. We can’t risk this thing with someone who has not done this before, who is unchallenged, who is untested. There is something to be said for two old white guys going at it. The African-Americans in the State Senate with me are going to be with him overwhelmingly. Because this is a pragmatic year. This isn’t a battle of ideologies or identity or Medicare for All or a Green New Whatever. It’s all about who can stop this juvenile narcissist from getting a second term.”

The glaring counterpoint to Harpootlian’s argument is the most shopworn of political clichés: Democrats fall in love, and Republicans fall in line. Since Vietnam, every time a Democrat has won the presidency, it’s because Democrats voted with their hearts in a primary and closed ranks around the candidate who inspired them, promising an obvious break from the past and an inspiring vision that blossomed in the general election. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. Barack Obama. All were young outsiders who tethered their message to the culture of the time. When Democrats have picked nominees cautiously and strategically—falling in line—the results have been devastating, as Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton made plain. It’s not a perfect rule: While Gore and Clinton didn’t quite electrify the country, they still won the popular vote. And George McGovern was a heart candidate who got slaughtered by Richard Nixon in 1972. But the McGovern wipeout is kind of what Biden and his loyalists are clinging to: the idea that this Trump moment, like the wrenching 60s, is so existential and high stakes that Democrats will overlook their usual instincts and do the sensible thing. Theatrical and Irish, Biden surely is hoping that he can be a vehicle for both passion and pragmatism. But if he wins the nomination next year, it will be because Democrats went with their heads, not their bleeding hearts.

“This is just not a normal year,” Harpootlian told me. “I believe that pragmatic Democrats will vote in larger numbers than what you would call the ideologue candidates. Joe’s record in Congress wasn’t particularly stellar, but they understand the importance of winning in November of 2020. The folks that I talk to, they aren’t looking for a socialist, or trying to make a statement on the basis of identity or sex or gender. They want somebody to run the country in a normal fashion that typifies the dignity of the office. People want stability.”