TEN
By April 2019, Biden and Donilon were under pressure to launch. Already, 19 Democrats had jumped into the race, the largest field in decades.
Donilon initially thought Biden should give a speech in Charlottesville. But complications arose with using the University of Virginia as a backdrop. Biden instead played against type: a controlled, three-and-a-half-minute taped video shared on social media. Something younger, more contemporary.
In a suit jacket and open-collared shirt with dramatic background music, Biden said “Charlottesville, Virginia, is home to the author of one of the great documents in human history,” Thomas Jefferson. It is “also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years.
“If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. Who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
Notable was what was not included. No biography. No discussion of policy. Just Charlottesville, the “soul of the nation,” and Trump as a moral aberration.
News coverage of the announcement had a check-the-box quality. The forever candidate. Many political reporters found Biden unexciting, like a grandfather they liked but who told too many folksy stories. Progressives outwardly detested him as a relic of Democratic mistakes on Iraq and the 1994 tough-on-crime bill, which disproportionately affected people of color. Most remembered was his much criticized handling of Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
Inside Biden’s circle, there was private grousing about the subtle dig behind the news coverage: Old white man, with a record of failing and dropping out early, enters the most diverse presidential primary contest. Couldn’t they see he was taking the fight straight to Trump?
Biden jumped on the Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington, the route he had traveled most evenings while in the Senate to be home with his family. He stopped at Gianni’s Pizza, ordered a pepperoni pizza to go, and talked with locals. And he called Heather Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, around 4:30 p.m., and spoke of loss.
Biden then headed to a campaign fundraiser in Philadelphia. The next day, his campaign reported it raised $6.3 million in the 24 hours following his announcement, more than any other Democratic candidate raised on their first day.
Donilon saw hope amid the naysaying, particularly about the “soul” theme being too vague and old-fashioned. It was who Biden was. The last thing Donilon wanted was another Democrat running another typical presidential campaign on promises for the economy or health care. Something bigger was at work.
The Trump White House reacted with surprise. What a lost opportunity for Joe Biden, Kellyanne Conway, the controversial Trump counselor, told the president, dissecting Biden’s video. Charlottesville?
Trump agreed. He found it ridiculous.
“His fast lane,” Conway told Trump, “was to remind everybody that he and he alone was Barack Obama’s number two.” Had his back. Remind people that he had the perfect Washington résumé. Instead, Biden made no mention of Obama or his experience.
She saw a better approach and went into automatic campaign mode. Biden should have said, “Trump is what happens when you don’t have enough Washington experience. Trump is what happens when you don’t know your way around Capitol Hill like I do. For those of you who miss the Obama years, I’m your guy.”
Conway called it a blown announcement. “Biden missed a second opportunity,” she said. “He should have energetically and enthusiastically made six or seven stops the day he announced in some of the states Obama-Biden carried two times and that you carried in 2016.”
They knew the states well—Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—and Trump’s margin of victory. “He should have had union guys behind him. Biden should have said to the voters, ‘Listen, I want you back.’ ”
Trump nodded and hit Biden as a candidate of likely little or no consequence, wildly out of step with his party. But he also knew Biden had a brand. If anyone understood the power of a brand, it was Trump. Obama-Biden had won two national races. He’d keep watch.
“Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe,” Trump said on Twitter. “I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty—you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!”
A few days later, Trump stopped to speak with reporters on the White House lawn before boarding Marine One. The helicopter’s blades were whirring. The president was buoyant, his tone taunting.
“I just feel like a young man. I’m so young. I can’t believe it,” Trump told them. “I’m a young vibrant man.
“I look at Joe. I don’t know about him.”
When Biden, appearing on ABC’s The View that day, was told of Trump’s comment, he playfully dipped his head for a second, blinked twice in exasperation, and smiled.
“Look,” Biden joked, “if he looks young and vibrant compared to me, I should probably go home.”
Biden’s eye was on Trump. In late April 2019, he traveled to Pittsburgh to serve up his middle-class arguments to a boisterous crowd at Teamsters Local 249.
“I am a union man,” he told the rank and file. “If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here.”
But by the summer, Anzalone came back with poll results from Iowa, the first contest. “Soul” was a flop. Iowa Democrats craved a bolder economic message.
Donilon would not budge, and Biden never asked for a change. “Soul of the nation” was it.