In the On Politics newsletter: Now that Mr. Biden has entered the race, we will see whether assumptions around his support, his past and his gaffes prove true.
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Matt Flegenheimer, your temporary host. Lisa Lerer is on vacation, filming her own campaign video about the promise of America.
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So, Joe Biden is in. Break out the aviators and finger guns.
For months, his will-he-or-won’t-he-but-he-probably-will routine has hovered over the race like a low-flying aircraft: There was little doubt where it was headed, but it seemed worth keeping an eye on just in case.
Yet Mr. Biden’s prolonged deliberations have also created a vacuum as the field has taken shape, filled inevitably by the projections and predictions of pundits, reporters and other assorted political types. (I, of course, have never been wrong about anything. But it sounds very unpleasant.)
Today, let’s take a swing through a few different — and potentially contradictory — assumptions surrounding Biden 2020 that will be tested in due time:
Assumption No. 1: His support is shallow and often tepid.
While Mr. Biden has led in many early polls, some professional Democrats view him as a bit of a paper-tiger favorite, coasting on name recognition and warm feelings about the Obama administration but doomed to stumble under deeper scrutiny.
Recent presidential primary history features several such candidates. You may have noticed that the 2008 campaign, which included solid early polling leads for Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, did not culminate in a New Yorker vs. New Yorker general election. You may have also noticed that Jeb Bush is not our current president.
But it is also possible that some voters’ attachment to Mr. Biden is being dismissed too readily. “My sense is that elite chatter is negative on Biden and underestimating his strengths,” said Howard Wolfson, a top adviser to Michael Bloomberg who oversaw extensive polling and focus groups on the 2020 field as Mr. Bloomberg considered a run of his own.
In particular, Mr. Wolfson said, voters are keenly aware of Mr. Biden’s personal losses and “the ways he has overcome adversity.” “It humanizes him,” he said, “and allows voters to form a fairly intense emotional connection.”
Assumption No. 2: Gaffes don’t matter in the Trump age.
Mr. Biden’s blunders can seem almost quaint now: cursing near a live microphone; asking a paraplegic to stand and be recognized; mistakenly suggesting that the mother of Ireland’s prime minister had passed away.
But it is still broadly assumed that Mr. Biden will soon say something that gets him into trouble, possibly by the time you’ve read this.
