Biden speech leaves big gaps on key policy issues

Few Democratic challengers for the US presidency have enjoyed a bigger lead in the polls than the RealClearPolitics average of 7.6 points Joe Biden had against Donald Trump going into this week’s four-day Democratic Party virtual convention. Yet at the end of it, and with less than 80 days to go to the November 3 election, few voters will be much clearer about what Barack Obama’s 77-year-old former vice-president really believes in beyond getting Mr Trump out of the White House. Mr Biden’s speech accepting the party’s nomination focused heavily on what he termed “normalcy and decency”. While light on policy detail, it was a good speech and well delivered — enough to disabuse some of the notion pushed by Mr Trump that his challenger is an over-the-hill dotard with seriously challenged acuity.

In a response to the deep divisions that have opened up in a society beleaguered by COVID-19, Mr Biden pledged an immediate action plan. The virus has infected 5.7 million Americans and killed more than 177,000. Appealing to the mood of the nation, Mr Biden promised that he was a Democratic candidate but would be “an American president … I will work hard for all those who didn’t support me”. Convinced that attacking Mr Trump’s character flaws will win him the White House, Mr Biden declared: “Character is on the ballot, compassion is on the ballot, decency, science, democracy. They’re all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation …”

But so, too, are persistent concerns that Mr Biden has compromised himself and become a captive of the Democratic Party’s radical left to win the nomination after 50 years as an elected public official. Six months ago, after a weak performance in the primaries, Mr Biden’s prospects appeared doomed. Senator Kamala Harris, from the party’s left, who is now his running mate, was furiously attacking him over alleged racism. And self-proclaimed democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders, the lodestar of the far left, was in the ascendant and highly critical of the “old-school” and “out-of-touch” Mr Biden. The extent to which the malleable Mr Biden has shifted ground and compromised his previously centrist principles to win their support was unmistakeable when Senator Sanders, referring to the radical far left’s involvement in drawing up the party’s platform, declared: “I’m not here to tell you that we got everything that we wanted. But I think if people look at the outcomes, they’ll find the reality is that whether it is on healthcare, whether it is on the environment or climate change, whether it’s education, whether it’s the economy, Joe Biden would be the most progressive president since FDR (Franklin D. Roosevelt).” The Trump campaign, predictably, erupted into a torrent of tweets, declaring “Socialist Bernie Sanders boasts that his radical ideas are now mainstream in the Democrat Party.”

Mr Biden has always insisted he is a moderate even though he has flip-flopped on major foreign policy issues such as US involvement in Iraq. Or, as Greg Sheridan wrote this week, he is “a man not so much for all seasons as for whatever weather system is passing by”. The party for which he is now the standard-bearer is taking radical policies to the election. These include tax rises of $US4 trillion ($5.5 trillion) for spending projects aimed to cut unemployment and the reversal of Mr Trump’s 2017 corporate and personal tax cuts. Mr Biden has railed against “shareholder capitalism”. And the party platform calls on him to put the US on an “irreversible path” to net-zero carbon emissions, ensure free college education for low-income students and rejoin the Paris Agreement.

Given widespread anger in the US over Mr Trump’s poor handling of the pandemic, Mr Biden has a good chance of winning. Between now and polling day the US media must subject him to close scrutiny to establish his views on the big-spending, radical agenda agreed at the convention. He cannot shy away from scrutiny in his Delaware basement. If he wins, Mr Biden would be 78 when sworn in next January. He would be a one-term president, most likely, with Senator Harris well placed to succeed him. The prospect of an avuncular “Uncle Joe” president may appear an appealing prospect to many US voters after the dramas of the Trump years. But voters need to be clear about the extent to which the left was in the ascendant at the convention and what that would mean under a Biden presidency.