Conversation

2) It paints a really compelling picture for primaries mattering, in terms of campaigns/funding/dynamics. And that things can be random and contingent.

3) around 20 mins in, they talk about people miss-predicting the primary. I think what they forgot: 2020 wasn't a random election. It was the election of Trump and COVID.

4) They describe D party leaders as all being skeptical of Biden and bullish on Warren. Which might have made sense in 2016! But not in 2020. Because 2020 wasn't an election dominated by enthusiasm or boldness.

5) 2020, from the Democratic side, was an election about two things: a) dealing with COVID b) beating Trump It was during a pandemic. No one was looking for excitement; no one had time or attention for it. The world was too scary as is.

6) And 2020, from the D side, was about beating Trump. Even the liberal wing cared more about beating Trump than how liberal the candidate was. And that was always Biden's strength.

2:03 AM · Mar 15, 2021Twitter Web App

7) Biden wasn't trying to be exciting, or to paint a compelling picture of who he was, or build his brand, or bold policies. He was generic and boring and focused on doing reasonable stuff, I guess, and you know being compassionate and understanding and calm and stuff.

Replying to

8) It seems like lot of people were drawing parallels to 2008: an unpopular R president and a contested D primary during an international crisis. In both, the classic Democratic line was: "this is the worst president ever".

9) But in retrospect, I think that line in 2008 seems silly. And 2020 wasn't really that much like 2008. The main criticisms of Bush were, roughly, "he's unimpressive". So they wanted someone impressive and inspiring.

10) In 2020, Biden seemed unimpressive to some D voters. And that almost seemed like a plus, because in the end "unimpressive" seemed like such an upgrade over the alternative. Biden was a boring candidate. In 2020, that's what a bit over 50% of the country wanted.

11) Biden's been in office for a couple months now. Probably his biggest moment was purchasing a bunch of vaccines for COVID. Which, I mean, duh, of course you buy a lot of vaccines. Except prior to that, the US hadn't.

12) Around 35 minutes in, they talk about how COVID impacted the campaign. And I think it hits an important point. Biden won in part because of COVID. But it wasn't inevitable that his stance would do better than Trump's.

13) If, while keeping his high level priorities on COVID constant, Trump had shown a bit more compassion, and had acted a bit more consistently and operationally efficiently, he might have won. Conventional wisdom is that hard-on-COVID is the politically good play. Maybe it is.

14) Or maybe sounding reasonable, compassionate, and competent are.

15) Around 40 minutes in they talk about police and protests. I think that part is worth listening to. And I wonder what Biden really thinks -- what is behind the public stance and statements.