Biden Tells Voters He’d ‘Stop Fighting and Start Fixing’ Country

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden told voters that he would lead the country “to stop fighting and start fixing” if elected president, striking a contrast with the current occupant of the White House and with many of the other Democrats hoping to win their party’s nomination.

After weeks spent explaining why he’s in the race for the Democratic nomination for a third time, the former vice president held a major campaign rally on Saturday to tell voters what he would do as president, and offered the promise of a reunited country.

“I know some of the really smart folks say Democrats don’t want to hear about unity. They say Democrats are so angry that the angrier a candidate can be, the better chance he or she has to win the Democratic nomination. Well, I don’t believe it. I really don’t,” said Biden, speaking outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, near its famous “Rocky” steps.

“I believe Democrats want to unify this nation. That’s what our party’s always been about.”

Biden argues that after spending nearly four decades in the Senate and eight years as Barack Obama’s deputy, he’s uniquely suited to bring the country together after Donald Trump’s presidency. He’s leaning into that, even as other Democrats argue this is not the time to be conciliatory with Republicans.

General Election

An early front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Biden seems already to be skipping past the primaries and setting his sights on the general election.

In a line that could be easily rephrased for an October debate stage, he said that Trump “inherited an economy from Obama-Biden administration that was given to him. Just like he inherited everything else in his life. And just like everything else he’s been given in his life, he in the process of squandering that as well.”

An early front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Biden seems already to be setting his sights on the general election and Trump. In a line that could be easily rephrased for an October debate stage, he said “

‘I’ve Done It’

“Folks, I’m going to say something outrageous: I know how to make government work. Not because I’ve talked or tweeted about it but because I’ve done it. I’ve worked across to reach consensus, to help make government work in the past,” Biden said on Saturday. “I can do that again with your help. To me our principles must never be compromised but compromise itself is not a dirty word. Consensus is not a weakness.”

But he said he would also be willing to go it alone when necessary, as Democrats did when passing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. “I know there are times when only a bare-knuckled fight will do,” he said. “I know we have to take on Republicans and do what’s right without any help from them.”

Biden entered the Democratic presidential nomination race last month with higher name recognition than any other candidate and is now the front-runner, but in many ways is still an empty vessel for voters.

Democratic Factions

Saturday’s rally, which drew a crowd of 6,000 according to a private security firm hired by Biden’s campaign, is a crucial transition for the 76-year-old as he attempts solidify support within a party in the midst of a power struggle between progressive and moderate factions.

Biden has promised a major speech on climate by the end of the month. A rollout of his health care proposals is also imminent. On Saturday, Biden said the first step of his climate plan would be to “beat Trump.”

When he delves deeper into his proposal, Biden probably won’t go as far as the Democratic Party left wing wants to go, but a campaign official said he won’t simply dust off President Barack Obama’s second-term positions either, even has he embraces describing himself as a “Obama-Biden Democrat.”

The candidate won’t dismiss the Green New Deal or Medicare for all -- two priorities of progressives, including Biden’s chief rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders -- but his focus will be on more immediate action, said a person familiar with the campaign’s planning.

‘The Understudy’

Biden’s campaign argues that when most Democratic voters evaluate the plans, they’ll see that his views align well with their own, or will conclude that even if they have policy differences with Biden, he’s still the candidate best suited to defeat Trump out of some two dozen now running.

“People know him as the understudy and they now want to see what he would do if he got a night on the main stage,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s 2016. Policy positions aren’t the entirety of that understanding, but they comprise key building blocks.

Democrats to Biden’s left, though, anticipate that as he begins to stake out positions, many voters will conclude that the plans aren’t aggressive enough.

“He’s a blank slate that’s ridden up to this primary on the coattails of a popular ex-president, so it’s very easy to project a whole host of ideas about what that means for 2020 and beyond,” said Neil Sroka, communications director of Democracy for America, a progressive activist group. “Once he actually starts having a plan and voters see how it differs from the others in the race, that’s not going to wear very well.”

Across the Aisle

Biden’s vision for unifying the country and working across the aisle is a legacy of the candidate’s more than three decades in the U.S. Senate. Some Democrats see no reason to reach out to Republicans in Congress or in their own neighborhoods when the GOP stood in the way of Obama’s agenda for eight years, and made little effort to reach out after Trump took office.

Biden has faced especially harsh criticism from fellow Democrats -- though not yet from fellow candidates -- for a suggestion that once Trump is out of office, “you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends” who’ll then agree to work across the aisle, at least one some issues.

One example Biden has offered is the support he was able to assemble, days before Trump took office, for $7 billion in cancer funding for the National Institutes of Health. Cancer research may be a uniquely bipartisan subject, but Biden and his team have hinted at the potential for even bigger accomplishments.

‘Exacting Concessions’

“Nobody has had more success staring Republicans down and exacting concessions from them than Vice President Biden,” Kate Bedingfield, his deputy campaign manager, said Friday on Bloomberg Radio. She cited Biden’s work negotiating fiscal agreements with Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who’s expected to remain the leader of the Senate Republicans after the 2020 election, regardless of which party holds the majority. “I put his chops up against anybody’s on that.”

Sroka said it’s naïve to think McConnell and his party will experience Biden’s suggested epiphany in 2021, and act differently then they did in 2009 or 2019. “The more and more Biden puts that forward as the plan, the more and more voters will turn off,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny

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