Joe Biden candidacy shows that Democrats are governed less by vision than by fear

Democrats cannot spend time insisting that Joe Biden is fit for another four years

Roger Strassburg, of Scottsdale, Arizona, watches the presidential debate between US president Joe Biden and Republican candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 27, 2024. Picture: Ross D. Franklin

IT WAS 17 years ago that Joe Biden, having just launched a second, hopeless bid for the presidency — his first having been toppled 20 years earlier by his habit of talking nonsense — infamously offered Barack Obama a compliment he thought magnanimous: “You got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he told the New York Observer.

“I mean that’s a storybook, man.”