Radio Sputnik spoke to Dr. Kyle Kopko, an associate professor of political science at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Kopko explained to Radio Sputnik why Biden was an attractive candidate compared to Trump, despite the latter having only been president for about 10 months.
"First of all, Joe Biden is widely viewed as a popular politician in the United States. There are a lot of voters who are sympathetic with his family situation, with [his son] Beau Biden passing away [from brain cancer in 2015]. It was very tragic, and there was speculation that [Joe] Biden would want to run for office in 2016, but he chose not to because of family reasons. It was a very emotional reason: he was seen crying on television when discussing this, so I think that helped him connect a lot with American voters."
"The other part is that, so far, the Trump administration hasn't really been successful in achieving any major legislative accomplishments. There's really no end in sight for the turmoil that we're seeing in Washington, DC, right now. It's possible that the Republican House and Senate might come to a compromise on a tax bill in the very near future, but that remains to be seen. So I think it's a combination of Biden being sympathetic, and then also the fact that the Trump administration has not had a chief win as of yet in its administration."
Radio Sputnik asked if the Democratic Party would push harder for Biden as their candidate after their failure to secure a victory with Hillary Clinton as their nominee in 2016. Kopko replied that it would definitely be a consideration. "They are are two very different candidates: Joe Biden is viewed moreso as a genuine man of the people, he has blue collar roots and whenever he was campaigning for president in the 1980s and then again in 2008 he would emphasize his upbringing in a blue collar town in northeast Pennsylvania. I think he was able to connect with a lot of the voters who actually supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election [despite their] very different personality and background type."
"That's compared with Hillary Clinton, who, for better or for worse, has been painted moreso as an elitist — someone who has been out of touch, particularly with working-class Americans and that demographic of voters. This is a group that Biden has really fought for and tried to keep in touch with throughout all of his political career, so they're very different candidates in that regard."
Other than, of course, a vast and shadowy network of Russian hackers, Clinton's inability to secure blue collar voters was seen as a chief cause of her surprise defeat in 2016. Radio Sputnik asked if Biden would have been able to defeat Trump had he been the Democratic nominee.
"I think that's very likely — but it's all speculative," Kopko replied. "I think that Biden would have been much more competitive in some states that Trump won, including Michigan and Wisconsin. Those two states have a very large blue-collar union sector of voters; I think they probably would have supported Biden now. Those two states alone wouldn't have been enough to put him up over the top, but I think it would at least have been a marked improvement compared to Hillary Clinton's electoral college votes."
So Biden wins the election. What does the country look like under his leadership, Radio Sputnik wondered. According to Kopoko, "you would probably see largely a continuation of the Obama administration policies, and I think that you would probably see many of the same individuals in a potential Biden administration. Biden certainly wouldn't be someone who would take to Twitter as often as President Trump, and I don't think that he would characterize foreign leaders in the same manner that [Trump does]."
"But he does have the ability to punch back. He's not going to allow someone like President Trump in 2020 during a campaign make misleading or false statements, he's going to call him on it. He's going to be, I think much more aggressive than, say, what Hillary Clinton was as a candidate."
Lastly, Radio Sputnik asked, what would Biden's policy towards Russia look like? Trump pushed for a softening of relations between Washington and Moscow, but thus far in his administration that policy has born little fruit. "This gets into the question about how much power does the president have over foreign policy," said Kopko. "That is actually the area where the president has the most control, because he has to defer to Congress largely for setting the domestic agenda, even though he can help shape it."
"I think that Biden probably would take a harder line on Russia, but even right now, members of Congress has been very reluctant to let any sort of sanctions lapse against Russia. I don't foresee that really changing in the future. It's just a matter of tone within the executive that's what I see being the difference between a President Trump and a President Biden."
