The Democratic Party of 2020 will face a reckoning with the Democratic Party of 50 years ago if former Vice President Joe Biden seeks the presidency, as he’s expected to do.
When Biden, who’s now 76, was first elected to the Senate from Delaware in 1972, Democrats relied on an electoral coalition that revolved primarily around working-class white voters, many of them conservative on cultural issues, particularly those involving race. With those voters in sight, Biden was one of many generally liberal Democrats during that era who took nuanced, or even openly conservative, positions on racially infused issues, including school busing and crime.
If Biden runs, he will force Democrats to decide whether those earlier views are still acceptable in a party that has moved left since then on all racially related issues, in response both to shifting attitudes in the country and the increasing diversity of its voters. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN