“Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden lashed out at a voter at [an Iowa] campaign event [last] Thursday, calling him ‘a damn liar’ for accusing him of ‘selling access’ to the presidency in Ukraine.”
(Des Moines Register)
The left is critical of Biden and weighs in on the relevance of Warren’s and Buttigieg’s employment history.
“For as much as Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972, touts himself as the man who can restore dignity to the White House, the truth is he is a behavioral and rhetorical wild card as well. Take his recent confrontation with a voter at a campaign event in Iowa… The way Biden handled the moment was Trumpian… Calling a misinformed voter a liar and challenging him to a pushup contest reeks of the machismo present in Trump's thinly-veiled exchange about penis size with Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016…
“For those who are used to Trump's crass behavior and vile rhetoric, there might be a desire among some voters to see a candidate sling some mud. And that's fine. But you can't do that while claiming to be the candidate who can clean things up. Biden needs to decide what kind of campaign he is going to run, and Democrats need to remember there is a difference between beating Trump at his own game and restoring the dignity of the White House they believe his presidency has tarnished.” (LZ Granderson, CNN)
The right continues to see Biden as the frontrunner and argues that Medicare-for-All may cost Democrats.
“I still think [Biden’s] the man most likely to be the Democratic nominee next year. There are a lot of Americans who have endured ups and downs the past few decades, particularly the past few years, and they don’t want a revolution; they just want things to settle down for a while. There are masses of older Americans out there who might be romanticizing the past, but they can think of a time in America before white nationalists marched through college campuses with tiki torches, before Wal-Marts started getting shot up by young men with rage-filled manifestos, before every movie, television show and celebrity had to be checked for thoughtcrimes by angry woke social media mobs…
“They remember — perhaps not entirely accurately — a time when public life was less divided and politicized, when people weren’t so angry all the time.” (Jim Geraghty, National Review)
