Thanks to @ChrisCuomo for this.
Honestly I like both these brothers—and liked their dad, too. He came to Harvard Law to give a speech to the 1Ls and it was a big day for me, as I'd admired his oratory/values for years. I'm glad Gov. (Andrew) Cuomo has his eye firmly on the ball.
Honestly I like both these brothers—and liked their dad, too. He came to Harvard Law to give a speech to the 1Ls and it was a big day for me, as I'd admired his oratory/values for years. I'm glad Gov. (Andrew) Cuomo has his eye firmly on the ball.
1/ This interview puts me in mind of something else. In 2016, I supported Sanders in the primary and endorsed Clinton in an article I published the day she spoke at the DNC. In that article I wrote about how it took me some time to "get" what her candidacy meant to so many.
2/ I'd wanted to vote for a woman for president in '16, but was so aligned with Sanders in some personal as well as political-vision ways I preferred him and was so focused on that that it took until the DNC for me to see things I should've understood earlier about Clinton's run.
3/ It is a massive embarrassment that our presidents have been (barring one) all white men. I'm at the point at which I'd prefer us to have an all-woman government if we could. I'm done with men running the federal government. It's one reason I was so excited to back Sen. Warren.
4/ I mention this because I'm trying to get better at seeing my blindspots *before* events force a reckoning with them. And I do wonder whether there's another blindspot I have that's made it harder for me to see what Gov. Andrew Cuomo was talking about with respect to Joe Biden.
5/ I'm *massively* biased in favor of political candidates who are extremely articulate, eloquent, demonstrably educated, and poised—I think I find myself wanting the sort of person as POTUS who I would've admired when I was a trial attorney: a fierce advocate who is unflappable.
6/ Though I endorsed Joe Biden here a few weeks ago—once Warren dropped out—I've recently had conversations with a number of folks who (like me) think Biden is a very good man, but are also (a lot less like me) incredibly, incredibly enthusiastic about his presidential candidacy.
7/ One of the things those conversations suggested to me is that I have an invisible *class* bias as a voter. The sort of candidate I'm looking for doesn't necessarily have the same sort of appeal for a wide swath of the country, socioeconomically speaking. Thus, What Cuomo said.
8/ I grew up in the middle class, but it was the upper-middle class. (There were some pretty lean years once I became an adult—but that was later.) What many people tell me is Biden—plainspoken, direct, not always polished—has an appeal to many voters that I don't as readily see.
9/ I think Andrew Cuomo articulates well here a sense among many voters that Biden understands their lives and their communities and their environments. And while that doesn't mean those same voters wouldn't (or didn't) like Warren or Buttigieg, it still does mark a difference.
10/ For all that Elizabeth Warren grew up under very modest circumstances in Oklahoma, there's no question that—partly due to misogyny, and perhaps partly other reasons—her biography didn't land with voters in the same way her professorial presentation appeared to do (at times).
11/ I guess what I'm saying is, you may well be—like me—a Warren/Sanders-type Democrat who struggles to understand how Biden could have enough appeal to win this fall. But the fact is, Joe has an indefinable "it" that is harder for me to see but *not* hard for millions of others.
12/ I realize this is a simplification—of Warren/Sanders' actual backgrounds; how important policy and vision should be in politics; the fact that (as THE WEST WING and THE NEWSROOM taught us) erudition is something of which to be proud—but it still has some truth, all the same.
13/ Coronavirus is, as a viral thread tonight detailed, causing terror—economic terror—in a massive swath of our population. And Biden has that indefinable "it"—in particular—for that swath of the population. And I want that huge swath of America to have a president it can trust.
14/ So this thread is a way of describing my journey—FWIW—to being at peace with a Joe Biden nomination, even when he's not my candidate in so many ways. It comes down to that he's good, well-intended, and feels like *home* to many people, including many who are scared right now.
15/ He's trusted and—yes, his sometimes tall tales told for entertainment notwithstanding—honest. He cares about people. He loves this country—unlike Trump. And while I won't say that I'll stop looking for the sort of president *I* want, I can more than live with President Biden.
