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My colleague Jamelle Bouie made two arguments in a column about Joe Biden this week. This morning, I want to agree with one of the two and take issue with the other.

Jamelle’s central point was that Biden may not be as strong a general-election candidate as many Democrats seem to be assuming. The first reason is that Biden’s current popularity — especially among swing voters and among Democratic voters who don’t always turn out — may prove fleeting.

Jamelle wrote: “Biden, like [Hillary] Clinton, is extremely vulnerable to Trumpian forms of faux-populist attack. He is a 36-year veteran of Washington who backed the Iraq War, cultivated close ties with banks and credit card companies and played a leading role in shaping the punitive policies that helped produced mass incarceration. As he did with Clinton, Trump can slam him on these issues and sow division among Democratic voters.”