Joshua Chaffin’s Post

Another great article, Josh. But the history and resentment goes deeper than that. Biden first ran for president in 1988, but was really campaigning in earnest from 1986 or 1987, in a seemingly never ending campaign chronicled in a classic book of its genre, “What it takes”. Think about it, 1986 was 38 years ago. Anyway, Biden was humiliated and forced out of that initial campaign when he was discovered to have plagiarized a speech, attributing to himself words and a personal history of a British Labour Party leader. Dukakis eventually won the primary but lost the general election in a landslide. Four years later, Bill Clinton seemingly came out of nowhere, young, charming, and with the Ivy League credentials (Yale Law School, Rhodes Scholar) Biden lacked, and became the first two term Democratic president since FDR surpassed that achievement in the 1940s. Obama quickly overshadowed the pedestrian presidential campaigns of Biden and Hillary Clinton in 2008. Obama offered Biden the vice presidency, but Biden resented both Obama’s Harvard Law pedigree and the disrespect he perceived from Obama’s young, highly credentialed staffers. Back to your headline - can the Democrats stay united under Biden? No, the answer is no.