Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

ust four weeks after Iowa’s dysfunctional caucuses left Democrats in splintered confusion, the Democratic presidential race has abruptly narrowed to two candidates who propose to take the party, and ultimately the nation, in different directions.

The election of either former Vice President Joe Biden or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would signal the resurgence of endangered democratic norms — allegiance to the rule of law, respect for career public servants, and human decency chief among them — that have been under relentless attack since Donald Trump’s inauguration.

But the nation, and our closely divided state, would be far better served by the succession of JOE BIDEN, whose four decades of experience in Congress and the West Wing have uniquely prepared him to meet the challenges awaiting the next president.

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Four years ago, Democrats reeling from the Hillary Clinton's defeat widely considered Biden the obvious heir to their party’s leadership. But as Donald Trump’s chaotic first term unfolded, a diverse group of contenders jumped into the race. Alarmed by Trump’s recklessness (and doubtless emboldened by the anything-can-happen audacity of his improbable electoral triumph) Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren all articulated thoughtful visions of what a United States in recovery from Trump could become.

If Democrats had devised a more sensible method of selecting their party’s nomination — a nationwide primary, for instance, or a more leisurely primary calendar that permitted voters in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida to weigh in earlier in the process — some of Biden’s rivals might well have earned Michigan voters’ serious consideration.

But party leaders anxious to avoid the sort of bruising, drawn-out intramural contest that preceded Clinton’s nomination ordained an accelerated primary schedule that ceded disparate influence to small, early-voting states (Iowa and New Hampshire) and delegate-rich behemoths California and Texas.

The objective was to identify a nominee early in the calendar year, conserving time and money for a sustained assault on Trump’s record. But when a larger-than-expected field a challenged Biden for the Democratic center, Sanders — an outsider who seems to inspire apprehension in most Democratic voters — emerged as the unlikely frontrunner.

The departures of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg on the eve of Super Tuesday set the stage for the anyone-but-Bernie Democratic majority to coalesce around one of the remaining candidates, and Biden seized the opportunity with wins in 10 of the 14 states that voted this week.

The unambiguous preference moderate Democrats expressed on Super Tuesday left little doubt that Bloomberg and Warren can accomplish anything worthwhile by remaining in the race. Bloomberg wasted no time in acknowledging that reality. Warren’s departure, in particular, would test (and, we believe, debunk) the theory that Sanders is the only refuge for progressive Democratic voters.

The unapologetic case for Joe

So what exactly recommends Joe Biden for the most difficult and important job in the world — besides the practical reality that he has become the only credible alternative to Sanders?

Back in January, long before the dynamics of the Democratic race came into sharper focus, we outlined the criteria that would inform the Free Press’ endorsement decision. Specifically, we were looking for the candidate whose experience, vision, realistic approach to foreign policy, electability and demonstrated ability to identify areas of broad public consensus rose above his or her rivals’.

Judged by those five metrics, Biden is the clear winner

His resume is distinguished by both its length and its breadth. He is, indeed, the only candidate with deep experience in both the legislative and executive branches. His 44-year tenure in federal government, which includes two previous bids for his party’s presidential nomination, reveals occasional lapses of judgment but not of character. As innocent of venality as any politician in Washington, he has demonstrated the capacity, so glaringly absent in the incumbent president, to learn from his policy errors and correct them.

During the Reagan administration, for example, Biden helped draft bipartisan legislation establishing sentencing guidelines that prescribed particularly harsh penalties for drug offenses involving crack. In practice, those guidelines condemned crack offenders (who tended to be poor and black) to lengthy prison sentences while exempting cocaine offenders (who were more likely to be white and affluent).

As vice president, though, Biden championed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, whose passage dramatically reduced the disparities that had proven to be both discriminatory and ineffectual. Those who dismiss that reversal as opportunistic should note how many politicians in both parties have since adopted Biden’s revised position.

Biden’s aspirations to re-establish America’s global leadership are similarly leavened by realism. Like his nuanced views on crimes and drug addiction, his pragmatic approach to foreign policy is born of long and sometimes painful experience. He has not always been prescient about the consequences of U.S. initiatives overseas. Like most of his Senate colleagues in both parties, he was insufficiently skeptical about the invasion and occupation of Iraq — but he has learned how to calibrate the nation’s ambitions for global stability and democratic progress with its finite resources and capabilities. It’s difficult to imagine a U.S., ally who would not be reassured by Biden’s election, or an adversary who would mistake it as an invitation to military aggression or nuclear mischief.

Back to 2015?

It has become fashionable for some progressives to sneer that Biden’s election would mark a retreat to the values and policies of the Democratic Party’s Clintonian past – an era many progressives now associate with nostalgic elitism, insensitivity to the needs of working people and minorities, and missed opportunities for bold economic reform. It is to those discontented Democrats that Sanders’ promise of a revolutionary break with the past is so seductive.

But besides ignoring the practical obstacles to such a revolution — we live in a nation where congressional and judicial consent still matter, however the incumbent president seeks to marginalize them — Sanders’ expansive vision makes light of how far mainstream Democrats like Biden have come.

Biden would bring to the White House an agenda far more ambitious than the one Obama realized or even articulated. Though Biden wisely declined to embrace the chimeric prescription for universal Medicare (a non-starter in any conceivable Congress), he has expressed support for many of the financial reforms proposed by Warren. Like Warren’s platform, Biden’s would shift power from Wall Street to consumers, entrepreneurs and workers.

Even incremental steps in that direction would signal not just a reversal of Trump’s single-minded deference to Wall Street, but the rekindling of a reformist impulse that failed to get sustained traction under Barack Obama. Biden’s coattails are much likelier than Sanders’ to furnish the sort of Congress any Democratic president will need to realize such an ambitious agenda. We worry, especially, that a ticket helmed by Sanders’ nomination would jeopardize the re-election of U.S. Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) and Haley Stevens (D-Troy), who won seats in historically red congressional districts. And the trust and goodwill Biden enjoys on Capitol Hill boost the odds that he will be able to break the partisan gridlock that has doomed bipartisan progress on immigration reform, gun violence, and climate change.

Repair, not retreat

There’s no doubt that nostalgia explains some of Biden’s appeal to older Americans. But the folly of any attempt to turn back the clock should not be confused with the urgency of shoring up norms and institutions whose vitality is critical to Democratic government.

Donald Trump’s brazen rejection of those norms and institutions has been more radical, and more dangerous, than any revolution Sanders proposes. The nation’s flat-footed response to COVID-19 is but the latest instance in which the Trump administration’s contempt for science, disdain for career professionals and misplaced confidence in the president’s omniscience have put American lives and interests in jeopardy.

Sanders’ arrogance is less profound, but it limits his potential to be a unifying force. Both men reflexively demonize their political opponents; each betrays the paranoiac conviction that persons and policies they disagree with are not merely misguided or ineffectual, but wickedly corrupt.

Biden, by contrast, has somehow made his way through half a century without vilifying broad segments of the American electorate. His decency and empathy are authentic. So is his humility, which grew organically from his personal experience with error, disappointment and familial tragedy.

Inevitably, he has sustained some significant self-inflicted wounds during his long Washington tenure. His penchant for verbal miscues is legendary. More concerning is his defense of his son Hunter’s lucrative appointment to the board of a Ukrainian energy company, an arrangement that undercut his U.S. efforts to combat cronyism and self-dealing in that country.

Still, Biden's manifest resilience and capacity for self-healing bode well for the gargantuan task of restoring decency, competence and credibility to the White House. No Democrat, Republican or third-party loyalist need fear him; his election would imperil only the poisonous mixture of cynicism, contempt and distrust that pervade American political life in the age of Donald Trump.

Michigan Democrats, and Americans across the political spectrum, are fortunate that he is available in our hour of national need.