From The Palm Beach Post, by David Brooks

Many of our best presidents have been underestimated. Harry S. Truman was seen as the tool of a corrupt political machine. Dwight D. Eisenhower was supposedly a bumbling middlebrow. Ulysses S. Grant was thought a taciturn simpleton. Even FDR was once considered a lightweight feather duster.

I’ve been reading Joe Biden’s speeches, and I’m beginning to think even his supporters are underestimating him.

He’s walking across treacherous cultural ground, confronting conflicts that are shredding the nation, and he’s mastering them with ease.

Biden was campaigning in a country that has lost faith in itself. Sixty-six percent of Americans believe our nation is in decline, according to a study from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

He’s also running in the middle of a political and cultural civil war. Eighty-two percent of Biden v**ers believe that “Donald Trump would like to gradually t***sform our country into a dictatorship,” according to that IASC study. Ninety percent of Trump v**ers believe that the Democrats want to gradually turn America into a socialist country. According to a survey conducted by Braver Angels, a group that sponsors bipartisan conversations, 70% of Americans believe that if the “wrong” candidate wins, “America will not recover.”

Biden was campaigning in a land filled with fear, hatred and apocalyptic thinking. It would have been so easy for him to reflect that fear and h**e back to v**ers. That’s what Trump does.

But Biden is not doing that. Never in my life had I seen a candidate so confidently avoid wedge issues. Biden is instead running on the conviction that, despite it all, Americans deeply love their country and viscerally long for its unity. He’s running with the knowledge that when you ask America about the greatest —threats to our future, “political polarization and d******eness” comes out No. 1.

It’s easy to say you’re for healing division. But here’s what Biden has actually done:

He de-ideologized the e******n. He made the campaign mostly about dealing with C****-**. That’s a practical problem, not an ideological one. Conservatives and moderates didn’t have to renounce their whole philosophy to v**e for him. They just said they’re v****g for the person who can take care of this.

He’s separated politics from the culture war. Over the past generation, culture war issues have increasingly swallowed our politics. Trump had put this process into overdrive. He barely talks about policies. Instead, his every subject is really about why “our” identity group is better than “their” identity group.

So now the positions people take — on issues ranging from c*****e c****e to immigration — are determined by whether they see themselves as part of the rural white Christian conservative army or part of the urban multicultural secular progressive army. Policies are no longer debated discretely; they are just battles in one big, existential fight over who we are.

But Biden goes back to the New Deal, to an era of policymaking when there really wasn’t a polarized culture war. He sidesteps the Kulturkampf issues — which statues to take down — to simply talk about helping the middle class.

Biden has scrambled the upscale/downscale dynamic. The most important fissure in our politics is education levels. The Democratic Party’s greatest long-term challenge is that it might become the party of the highly credentialed college-educated class and let some future Republican rally a multiracial working-class coalition. Even Trump is now making surprising gains among Latino and Black men.

Biden has avoided all the little microaggressions that cultural elites use to show they are morally superior. Woke-ness, for example, is partly about fighting oppression, but it’s also become a status symbol. It’s showing people that you are so intellectually evolved that you can use words like intersectionality, decolonizing and cultural appropriation. Political correctness is not just a means for the less privileged to set standards of behavior; it is also sometimes the way people with cultural power push others around.

Unlike, say, Hillary Clinton, Biden has a worldview and a manner that is both educated class and working class and defuses the divide.

Biden has avoided the stupid binaries about race. Trump went to Mount Rushmore and made a speech essentially saying you can either believe in s******c r****m or you can love America. Biden went to Gettysburg and argued that you can “honestly face s******c r****m” and love America. He argued that you can believe in fighting r****m and believe in law and order. His worldview is based on universal categories — the things we share — not identitarian ones — the ways we supposedly can’t understand each other across difference.

He’s done a good job reaching out to white evangelicals. Right now, many of them think he’s a godless socialist who will usher in a reign of anti-religious terror. In his campaign, he’s done a pretty good job reaching out to those v**ers. His campaign has run ads on Christian radio and reached out aggressively to evangelical leaders. If he can allay their cultural fears (by making it clear he will not shut down Christian charitable groups) and win them over with working-class economic policies, he can create a long-term governing majority.

Seventy percent of Americans in that Braver Angels survey say America is facing permanent harm, but 70% also say the most important job after the e******n is to heal our enmity, to do the hard job of working with people whose views we find completely objectionable. This unity impulse is powerful in the populace, but it is deeply hidden.

Biden knew it was there.

From The Palm Beach Post, by David Brooks

Many of our best presidents have been underestimated. Harry S. Truman was seen as the tool of a corrupt political machine. Dwight D. Eisenhower was supposedly a bumbling middlebrow. Ulysses S. Grant was thought a taciturn simpleton. Even FDR was once considered a lightweight feather duster.

I’ve been reading Joe Biden’s speeches, and I’m beginning to think even his supporters are underestimating him.

He’s walking across treacherous cultural ground, confronting conflicts that are shredding the nation, and he’s mastering them with ease.

Biden was campaigning in a country that has lost faith in itself. Sixty-six percent of Americans believe our nation is in decline, according to a study from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

He’s also running in the middle of a political and cultural civil war. Eighty-two percent of Biden v**ers believe that “Donald Trump would like to gradually t***sform our country into a dictatorship,” according to that IASC study. Ninety percent of Trump v**ers believe that the Democrats want to gradually turn America into a socialist country. According to a survey conducted by Braver Angels, a group that sponsors bipartisan conversations, 70% of Americans believe that if the “wrong” candidate wins, “America will not recover.”

Biden was campaigning in a land filled with fear, hatred and apocalyptic thinking. It would have been so easy for him to reflect that fear and h**e back to v**ers. That’s what Trump does.

But Biden is not doing that. Never in my life had I seen a candidate so confidently avoid wedge issues. Biden is instead running on the conviction that, despite it all, Americans deeply love their country and viscerally long for its unity. He’s running with the knowledge that when you ask America about the greatest —threats to our future, “political polarization and d******eness” comes out No. 1.

It’s easy to say you’re for healing division. But here’s what Biden has actually done:

He de-ideologized the e******n. He made the campaign mostly about dealing with C****-**. That’s a practical problem, not an ideological one. Conservatives and moderates didn’t have to renounce their whole philosophy to v**e for him. They just said they’re v****g for the person who can take care of this.

He’s separated politics from the culture war. Over the past generation, culture war issues have increasingly swallowed our politics. Trump had put this process into overdrive. He barely talks about policies. Instead, his every subject is really about why “our” identity group is better than “their” identity group.

So now the positions people take — on issues ranging from c*****e c****e to immigration — are determined by whether they see themselves as part of the rural white Christian conservative army or part of the urban multicultural secular progressive army. Policies are no longer debated discretely; they are just battles in one big, existential fight over who we are.

But Biden goes back to the New Deal, to an era of policymaking when there really wasn’t a polarized culture war. He sidesteps the Kulturkampf issues — which statues to take down — to simply talk about helping the middle class.

Biden has scrambled the upscale/downscale dynamic. The most important fissure in our politics is education levels. The Democratic Party’s greatest long-term challenge is that it might become the party of the highly credentialed college-educated class and let some future Republican rally a multiracial working-class coalition. Even Trump is now making surprising gains among Latino and Black men.

Biden has avoided all the little microaggressions that cultural elites use to show they are morally superior. Woke-ness, for example, is partly about fighting oppression, but it’s also become a status symbol. It’s showing people that you are so intellectually evolved that you can use words like intersectionality, decolonizing and cultural appropriation. Political correctness is not just a means for the less privileged to set standards of behavior; it is also sometimes the way people with cultural power push others around.

Unlike, say, Hillary Clinton, Biden has a worldview and a manner that is both educated class and working class and defuses the divide.

Biden has avoided the stupid binaries about race. Trump went to Mount Rushmore and made a speech essentially saying you can either believe in s******c r****m or you can love America. Biden went to Gettysburg and argued that you can “honestly face s******c r****m” and love America. He argued that you can believe in fighting r****m and believe in law and order. His worldview is based on universal categories — the things we share — not identitarian ones — the ways we supposedly can’t understand each other across difference.

He’s done a good job reaching out to white evangelicals. Right now, many of them think he’s a godless socialist who will usher in a reign of anti-religious terror. In his campaign, he’s done a pretty good job reaching out to those v**ers. His campaign has run ads on Christian radio and reached out aggressively to evangelical leaders. If he can allay their cultural fears (by making it clear he will not shut down Christian charitable groups) and win them over with working-class economic policies, he can create a long-term governing majority.

Seventy percent of Americans in that Braver Angels survey say America is facing permanent harm, but 70% also say the most important job after the e******n is to heal our enmity, to do the hard job of working with people whose views we find completely objectionable. This unity impulse is powerful in the populace, but it is deeply hidden.

Biden knew it was there.

Pretty good resume' for a joke.

David Brooks is a conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He has worked as a film critic for The Washington Times, a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception, a contributing editor at Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly, and a commentator on NPR and the PBS NewsHour.

From The Palm Beach Post, by David Brooks

Many of our best presidents have been underestimated. Harry S. Truman was seen as the tool of a corrupt political machine. Dwight D. Eisenhower was supposedly a bumbling middlebrow. Ulysses S. Grant was thought a taciturn simpleton. Even FDR was once considered a lightweight feather duster.

I’ve been reading Joe Biden’s speeches, and I’m beginning to think even his supporters are underestimating him.

He’s walking across treacherous cultural ground, confronting conflicts that are shredding the nation, and he’s mastering them with ease.

Biden was campaigning in a country that has lost faith in itself. Sixty-six percent of Americans believe our nation is in decline, according to a study from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

He’s also running in the middle of a political and cultural civil war. Eighty-two percent of Biden v**ers believe that “Donald Trump would like to gradually t***sform our country into a dictatorship,” according to that IASC study. Ninety percent of Trump v**ers believe that the Democrats want to gradually turn America into a socialist country. According to a survey conducted by Braver Angels, a group that sponsors bipartisan conversations, 70% of Americans believe that if the “wrong” candidate wins, “America will not recover.”

Biden was campaigning in a land filled with fear, hatred and apocalyptic thinking. It would have been so easy for him to reflect that fear and h**e back to v**ers. That’s what Trump does.

But Biden is not doing that. Never in my life had I seen a candidate so confidently avoid wedge issues. Biden is instead running on the conviction that, despite it all, Americans deeply love their country and viscerally long for its unity. He’s running with the knowledge that when you ask America about the greatest —threats to our future, “political polarization and d******eness” comes out No. 1.

It’s easy to say you’re for healing division. But here’s what Biden has actually done:

He de-ideologized the e******n. He made the campaign mostly about dealing with C****-**. That’s a practical problem, not an ideological one. Conservatives and moderates didn’t have to renounce their whole philosophy to v**e for him. They just said they’re v****g for the person who can take care of this.

He’s separated politics from the culture war. Over the past generation, culture war issues have increasingly swallowed our politics. Trump had put this process into overdrive. He barely talks about policies. Instead, his every subject is really about why “our” identity group is better than “their” identity group.

So now the positions people take — on issues ranging from c*****e c****e to immigration — are determined by whether they see themselves as part of the rural white Christian conservative army or part of the urban multicultural secular progressive army. Policies are no longer debated discretely; they are just battles in one big, existential fight over who we are.

But Biden goes back to the New Deal, to an era of policymaking when there really wasn’t a polarized culture war. He sidesteps the Kulturkampf issues — which statues to take down — to simply talk about helping the middle class.

Biden has scrambled the upscale/downscale dynamic. The most important fissure in our politics is education levels. The Democratic Party’s greatest long-term challenge is that it might become the party of the highly credentialed college-educated class and let some future Republican rally a multiracial working-class coalition. Even Trump is now making surprising gains among Latino and Black men.

Biden has avoided all the little microaggressions that cultural elites use to show they are morally superior. Woke-ness, for example, is partly about fighting oppression, but it’s also become a status symbol. It’s showing people that you are so intellectually evolved that you can use words like intersectionality, decolonizing and cultural appropriation. Political correctness is not just a means for the less privileged to set standards of behavior; it is also sometimes the way people with cultural power push others around.

Unlike, say, Hillary Clinton, Biden has a worldview and a manner that is both educated class and working class and defuses the divide.

Biden has avoided the stupid binaries about race. Trump went to Mount Rushmore and made a speech essentially saying you can either believe in s******c r****m or you can love America. Biden went to Gettysburg and argued that you can “honestly face s******c r****m” and love America. He argued that you can believe in fighting r****m and believe in law and order. His worldview is based on universal categories — the things we share — not identitarian ones — the ways we supposedly can’t understand each other across difference.

He’s done a good job reaching out to white evangelicals. Right now, many of them think he’s a godless socialist who will usher in a reign of anti-religious terror. In his campaign, he’s done a pretty good job reaching out to those v**ers. His campaign has run ads on Christian radio and reached out aggressively to evangelical leaders. If he can allay their cultural fears (by making it clear he will not shut down Christian charitable groups) and win them over with working-class economic policies, he can create a long-term governing majority.

Seventy percent of Americans in that Braver Angels survey say America is facing permanent harm, but 70% also say the most important job after the e******n is to heal our enmity, to do the hard job of working with people whose views we find completely objectionable. This unity impulse is powerful in the populace, but it is deeply hidden.

Biden knew it was there.

From The Palm Beach Post, by David Brooks

Many of our best presidents have been underestimated. Harry S. Truman was seen as the tool of a corrupt political machine. Dwight D. Eisenhower was supposedly a bumbling middlebrow. Ulysses S. Grant was thought a taciturn simpleton. Even FDR was once considered a lightweight feather duster.

I’ve been reading Joe Biden’s speeches, and I’m beginning to think even his supporters are underestimating him.

He’s walking across treacherous cultural ground, confronting conflicts that are shredding the nation, and he’s mastering them with ease.

Biden was campaigning in a country that has lost faith in itself. Sixty-six percent of Americans believe our nation is in decline, according to a study from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

He’s also running in the middle of a political and cultural civil war. Eighty-two percent of Biden v**ers believe that “Donald Trump would like to gradually t***sform our country into a dictatorship,” according to that IASC study. Ninety percent of Trump v**ers believe that the Democrats want to gradually turn America into a socialist country. According to a survey conducted by Braver Angels, a group that sponsors bipartisan conversations, 70% of Americans believe that if the “wrong” candidate wins, “America will not recover.”

Biden was campaigning in a land filled with fear, hatred and apocalyptic thinking. It would have been so easy for him to reflect that fear and h**e back to v**ers. That’s what Trump does.

But Biden is not doing that. Never in my life had I seen a candidate so confidently avoid wedge issues. Biden is instead running on the conviction that, despite it all, Americans deeply love their country and viscerally long for its unity. He’s running with the knowledge that when you ask America about the greatest —threats to our future, “political polarization and d******eness” comes out No. 1.

It’s easy to say you’re for healing division. But here’s what Biden has actually done:

He de-ideologized the e******n. He made the campaign mostly about dealing with C****-**. That’s a practical problem, not an ideological one. Conservatives and moderates didn’t have to renounce their whole philosophy to v**e for him. They just said they’re v****g for the person who can take care of this.

He’s separated politics from the culture war. Over the past generation, culture war issues have increasingly swallowed our politics. Trump had put this process into overdrive. He barely talks about policies. Instead, his every subject is really about why “our” identity group is better than “their” identity group.

So now the positions people take — on issues ranging from c*****e c****e to immigration — are determined by whether they see themselves as part of the rural white Christian conservative army or part of the urban multicultural secular progressive army. Policies are no longer debated discretely; they are just battles in one big, existential fight over who we are.

But Biden goes back to the New Deal, to an era of policymaking when there really wasn’t a polarized culture war. He sidesteps the Kulturkampf issues — which statues to take down — to simply talk about helping the middle class.

Biden has scrambled the upscale/downscale dynamic. The most important fissure in our politics is education levels. The Democratic Party’s greatest long-term challenge is that it might become the party of the highly credentialed college-educated class and let some future Republican rally a multiracial working-class coalition. Even Trump is now making surprising gains among Latino and Black men.

Biden has avoided all the little microaggressions that cultural elites use to show they are morally superior. Woke-ness, for example, is partly about fighting oppression, but it’s also become a status symbol. It’s showing people that you are so intellectually evolved that you can use words like intersectionality, decolonizing and cultural appropriation. Political correctness is not just a means for the less privileged to set standards of behavior; it is also sometimes the way people with cultural power push others around.

Unlike, say, Hillary Clinton, Biden has a worldview and a manner that is both educated class and working class and defuses the divide.

Biden has avoided the stupid binaries about race. Trump went to Mount Rushmore and made a speech essentially saying you can either believe in s******c r****m or you can love America. Biden went to Gettysburg and argued that you can “honestly face s******c r****m” and love America. He argued that you can believe in fighting r****m and believe in law and order. His worldview is based on universal categories — the things we share — not identitarian ones — the ways we supposedly can’t understand each other across difference.

He’s done a good job reaching out to white evangelicals. Right now, many of them think he’s a godless socialist who will usher in a reign of anti-religious terror. In his campaign, he’s done a pretty good job reaching out to those v**ers. His campaign has run ads on Christian radio and reached out aggressively to evangelical leaders. If he can allay their cultural fears (by making it clear he will not shut down Christian charitable groups) and win them over with working-class economic policies, he can create a long-term governing majority.

Seventy percent of Americans in that Braver Angels survey say America is facing permanent harm, but 70% also say the most important job after the e******n is to heal our enmity, to do the hard job of working with people whose views we find completely objectionable. This unity impulse is powerful in the populace, but it is deeply hidden.

Biden knew it was there.

Why worry now, Smedley, as I'ma guessing Mr. Brooks has never really been on your itinerary Yet, let's just say that he's on the same planet as 81 million+ American v**ers. In any event...relax, as reading another's view or opinion doesn't have to be taken to heart. We all, in the end, make our choices

The esteemed author touts Biden's achievements (as he unilaterally determines them to be) prior to the e******n. It is stunning to me that such homage can be paid a man who did not campaign. He stayed in seclusion, hid behind C***d, dodged debates, and was shrouded in a protective bubble by handlers and the media.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It does make one wonder how badly Biden would'a beaten Trump had he not just sat back and let Trump defeat himself BTW, the consensus was that Biden won the debates...again, almost by default.