MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Democratic activists in the first primary state worry that if Joe Biden is the party’s presidential nominee, he could lose the 2020 election for some of the same reasons Hillary Clinton was defeated in 2016.
Biden, 76, has consistently led the crowded Democratic field in polls in part because voters see him as the most capable of defeating President Trump in 2020. About 3 out of 4 Democratic voters considering Biden in the primary say that he is the most likely to beat Trump, according to a CBS poll released Monday. Jill Biden, the former vice president’s wife, explicitly stated that voters should choose him even if they disagree on some policy points because “your bottom line is you have to beat Trump.”
But many voters who attended the New Hampshire Democratic state convention were skeptical that Biden was the most electable Democrat and remember similar claims being made about party establishment figures stretching back to Walter Mondale in 1984 who were nominated and went on to lose.
“Biden is Hillary Clinton, part two. He’s an establishment candidate,” said Katie Pederson, 28, who works for a call center and for Southern New Hampshire University. “I don’t think Biden could beat Trump.”
Goffstown resident Kathy Ireland, 67, who is retired, shared similar concerns. “I’m not for Biden,” she said. “He claims to be electable, but I’m not convinced.” In 2016, Democratic nominee Clinton, a policy wonk to the core, had a better chance than Biden at beating Trump. “He’s not that up on things. He’s not up on issues.”
For Democrats nationally, Clinton was only the latest in a string of nominees over recent decades who won their nominations on claims of being the most electable, only to flame out against Republican rivals with more personality and passion or easy-to-remember slogans versus Democrats’ briefing book approach.
John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore four years earlier fell into that technocratic category. Landslide losers from the Reagan and George H.W. Bush eras still traumatize skeptical New Hampshire voters as well, including Michael Dukakis in 1988 and former Vice President Walter Mondale four years earlier, who won only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
In the case of Biden, previous voter criticism has centered on his age. Biden would be the oldest president ever elected, and his propensity for misstating names and stumbling over his words has called into question whether he can execute the duties of the presidential office. Last month, Biden asked, “What’s not to like about Vermont?” when he was in New Hampshire and mistook Houston for El Paso, Texas, and Michigan for Ohio when discussing mass shootings in early August.
But many New Hampshire voters say that Biden’s antiquated style of Democratic politics will be a bigger problem than his age. “I hate to say it, he’s old,” said Kit Hansen, another retired Goffstown resident. “I don’t really mean old age. He’s yesterday’s news.”
“The American people have made it very clear that we want someone who speaks for the people,” Pederson said. “We don’t want the vice president. We don’t want the president’s wife. We don’t want the president’s brother. We’ve told Washington this over and over and over again, and they keep losing.”
David McCuan, political science professor at Sonoma State University, told the Washington Examiner that, if anything, Biden lacks some of Clinton’s advantages in 2016. “Joe Biden is not exactly starting any fire in terms of momentum or excitement,” McCuan said, and the electability argument “is not going to be sufficient to draw out voters.”
Elections in 2020 and 2024 present a transition to an emerging electorate, McCuan said, mentioning younger voters, Hispanic voters, and women. The new electorate “votes episodically,” but Biden “is talking to regular, habitual voters.”
“If the argument is going to be that you’re going to get white working-class voters to your side, that’s Joe Biden’s argument, you’re going to have to look very closely at that data because other core Democratic groups are going to hold back or not show up,” McCuan said.
A challenge that Biden shares with Clinton is on settling on a campaign slogan and theme that sticks. The Biden campaign is “going to have to roll out his theme or roll out his moniker, whatever it’s going to be, more than once,” McCuan said.
