The Vice President doesn't do much, so the office suited Joe Biden well. Our calm determined overachieving President needed a warm-hearted goofball sidekick, and Biden was a perfect fit for the role. Republicans didn't really care to attack him either -- much better to go after Obama. So his poll numbers rose, and pundits praised his electability.
Biden isn't nearly as good at being a Presidential candidate. He lost in 1988 despite having the most early money, and lost in 2008 when he was one of the more experienced Senators. Message discipline and generally avoiding sloppy campaign mistakes are not his strengths.
One aspect of electability is: how good is the candidate at running for President? It's one you can emphasize a little less in making decisions, because a candidate who's really bad at running will usually crash and burn before the voting even starts, and you won't have to think about them.
But it may help to explain why the two successful Democratic Presidential candidates I've seen were the young upstarts of their times. If Bill Clinton and Barack Obama weren't good at running, they wouldn't have made it through the primary. Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton got their nominations more through institutional support than on the campaign trail -- and they lost general elections.
(I also wonder if it helps to fake out the right-wing media. National Republicans had been smearing Hillary for 15 years before the 2008 election, and they were all locked and loaded to do it again, and then... that's not Hillary! That's... some black guy? When you nominate someone they didn't expect and haven't propagandized against, they might not be able to get their work done in the few months they have.)
But this is all to say -- the idea of Biden as especially electable is probably an illusion. His numbers were inflated by being in a role that turned his weaknesses into strengths, and now they're going back to being weaknesses. Better to have someone who does things right during the election and moves upwards than the person who came in at the top.
Biden isn't nearly as good at being a Presidential candidate. He lost in 1988 despite having the most early money, and lost in 2008 when he was one of the more experienced Senators. Message discipline and generally avoiding sloppy campaign mistakes are not his strengths.
One aspect of electability is: how good is the candidate at running for President? It's one you can emphasize a little less in making decisions, because a candidate who's really bad at running will usually crash and burn before the voting even starts, and you won't have to think about them.
But it may help to explain why the two successful Democratic Presidential candidates I've seen were the young upstarts of their times. If Bill Clinton and Barack Obama weren't good at running, they wouldn't have made it through the primary. Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton got their nominations more through institutional support than on the campaign trail -- and they lost general elections.
(I also wonder if it helps to fake out the right-wing media. National Republicans had been smearing Hillary for 15 years before the 2008 election, and they were all locked and loaded to do it again, and then... that's not Hillary! That's... some black guy? When you nominate someone they didn't expect and haven't propagandized against, they might not be able to get their work done in the few months they have.)
But this is all to say -- the idea of Biden as especially electable is probably an illusion. His numbers were inflated by being in a role that turned his weaknesses into strengths, and now they're going back to being weaknesses. Better to have someone who does things right during the election and moves upwards than the person who came in at the top.
