Here's a news clip from 1988.
Here's a recent clip of Biden similarly enhancing his resume. Why do you suppose Biden had to drop out in 1988, while, in 2020, he won the election and, for much of 2024, it looked like he a fair chance to be reelected? Why wasn't Joe Biden the president we deserved in 1988, and why was he the president we deserved in 2020?
A fair way to understand this is that Joe Biden’s outcomes in 1988 and 2020 were shaped less by one single issue and more by differences in timing, experience, media environment, and politics in each era.
ReplyDeleteIn 1988, Joe Biden was still relatively early in his national career. When reporters discovered that he had plagiarized parts of a speech from Neil Kinnock and had also exaggerated parts of his academic record, it created a major credibility problem. At that time, political campaigns were less forgiving of these kinds of mistakes for newer candidates, especially someone trying to win a first presidential nomination. The media scrutiny also hit quickly and strongly, and Joe Biden withdrew from the race before the primaries really developed.
By 2020, Joe Biden was in a very different position. He had decades of experience as a U.S. Senator and had served two terms as Vice President under Barack Obama. Because of that, voters already had a long, well-known record to evaluate, not just early-career controversies. In addition, American politics had become much more polarized, meaning many voters were focused more on broader issues and party choices than on past personal mistakes from decades earlier.
The context of the 2020 election also mattered. Joe Biden was running against an incumbent, Donald Trump, during a highly unusual moment in U.S. history, including the COVID-19 pandemic and economic uncertainty. Those larger issues shaped how voters made decisions.
So rather than thinking in terms of who “should” have been president, it’s more accurate to say that Joe Biden’s early campaign in 1988 was derailed by a credibility scandal at a vulnerable stage in his career, while in 2020 he benefited from long experience, changed political conditions, and a very different national context.