*The* most important reason for Biden

[athena]

12. I am mystified by the level of Biden support here.

Biden is a centrist. He is all about compromising with Republicans. DUers hate compromise. So why all these pro-Biden posts? I can imagine some support on DU for a centrist, but not this much. The only explanation I can come up with is that he is an older white male, which is the demographic that dominates DU. That one fact completely explains the level of visceral Hillary hatred that we observed here in 2016 (which helped give us President Trump) and the irrational love for Biden now.

https://prospect.org/article/fearful-democrats-and-false-allure-policy-centrism

The current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden, is basing his candidacy on the proposition that he will be able to win over significant numbers of Republican voters, once they see that he's more moderate than other Democrats and realize what a repellent human being Donald Trump is.

The only problem with that theory is that there is no reason to believe it's true. Trump’s approval from Republican voters is at a near-perfect 90 percent, according to Gallup, and it isn't like they haven’t gotten a good enough look at him to realize who he is. Their elected officials have proven time and time again that there is literally nothing Trump could do that would make them turn their backs on him; the one or two who felt that they might, like former Senator Jeff Flake, did it only when they were on their way to retirement.

But Joe Biden has faith in the GOP. “This is not the Republican Party,” he says, testifying to his bond with “my Republican friends in the House and Senate.” Once Trump is gone, they’ll revert to their old responsible selves and become reasonable again. Just like they were when Biden was vice president and they pursued a strategy of total opposition to everything Barack Obama wanted to do, capping it off by refusing to allow his nomination to a vacant Supreme Court seat to even get a hearing. Those Republicans are the ones who are supposedly going to join with President Biden in a spirit of bipartisan compromise to do what is best for the country.

https://newrepublic.com/article/145199/joe-biden-wants-compromise-progressives-dont-want-hear-it

He said that “today it takes more courage to engage in compromise to achieve consensus on both sides.” And distancing himself gently from his own side, he noted that the left “came after me because I didn’t insist on everything” in raising taxes on the wealthy. “Guys, the wealthy are as patriotic as the poor,” he said. “I know Bernie doesn’t like me saying that, but they are.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/02/politics/elizabeth-warren-joe-biden-history-bankruptcy-bill/index.html

But when asked last week whether the former vice president was "too cozy" with Wall Street, the Massachusetts senator was unusually direct, noting that their "disagreement is a matter of public record."

"At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hardworking families who are in bankruptcy because of medical problems, job losses, divorce and death in the family, there was nobody to stand up for them," Warren said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the same day that Biden officially announced his candidacy.

And then, with a single sentence, Warren opened up a new chapter in the campaign: "I got in that fight because they just didn't have anyone, and Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies."