The title of a new book, “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency,” by the journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, sums up its thesis concisely: Biden is essentially president by accident. …
This is a common thread in a lot of coverage of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race: that had Biden not caught a few breaks, someone else would have gone up against President Donald Trump last fall — and that Biden may have been lucky to beat Trump as well. Incumbent presidents tend to win reelection, and but for a once-in-a-century pandemic, Trump might have, too.
But this argument deeply discounts the degree to which major players in the Democratic Party backed Biden even before the primaries began, precisely because he was perceived as the candidate most likely to prevail over the incumbent. The “luck” narrative dismisses the hard work the Democratic Party did between 2016 and 2020 to determine the qualities of a candidate who could beat Trump. If Biden appeared to draw a good hand at a few key points in the race, it’s because the party had stacked the deck in his favor. CONTINUED
Seth Masket (U. of Denver), Washington Post