Both men were under 50 when they attained the presidency, and both were in keeping with the Democratic Party’s flattering (and not quite accurate) image of itself, from John F. Kennedy onward, as youthful, innovative, visionary, trailblazing. But Biden, 76, isn’t about exploring uncharted paths. He’s about following bread crumbs back to where we lost our way. Less Lewis and Clark, more Hansel and Gretel.

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a Trump thing. For many Democrats, Biden included, the insult of Trump is so immense and the threat that he poses so profound that 2020 isn’t a year for experiments and idealism. It’s a year for survival. It’s a lunge for normalcy, stability, convention — Republican buzzwords that are suddenly many Democrats’ goals.

And from that mind-set springs Biden’s campaign, drab in the abstract but unorthodox in the context of Democratic proclivity and precedent.

Unorthodox in respect to his rivals, too.

Bernie Sanders, with his call for Democratic socialism; Kamala Harris, with her intensifying emphasis on racial disparities; Elizabeth Warren, with her encyclopedia of plans; Pete Buttigieg, with his husband and his mere 37 years on earth — the election of any one of them would be a bold statement, a milestone. Each is a figure exponentially more romantic than Biden, counting to some degree on the adage that while Republican voters fall in line, Democratic voters fall in love.

Biden, in contrast, is trying to get Democrats to do something that Republicans have more practice at: choose a nominee who’s due over one who’s new. He’s the liberal iteration of Bob Dole, the looser version of Mitt Romney, John McCain without Lindsey Graham glued to his side.

He has his raft of policy positions — many of them echoes or adaptations of Obama’s — but they’re not what his supporters think of first. They’re not what he thinks of first, either.

That was clear in a revealing passage from his recent interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Asked about Harris’s attack on his civil rights record, he signaled surprise and hurt.