Note to Biden backers: A senescent gaffe machine might not be Dems' best bet

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has already demonstrated that it can and will work to disqualify Biden, one gaffe at a time. The most widely shared clip of Biden’s “poor kids” slip-up on progressive Twitter Thursday night was packaged by the president’s official rapid-response director. On Saturday, Trump himself called out Biden’s “truth over facts” flub.

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Electability is in the eye of the beholder. I’m far from convinced that there’s a tradeoff between how progressive a Democratic candidate is, and how likely he or she would be to prevail next November. Bernie Sanders is something close to a known commodity at this point, and he still polls quite well against Trump. Elizabeth Warren is proving herself a far stronger campaigner than many skeptics had predicted. That said, those in the market for a conventionally “electable” moderate have plenty of safer bets than an Iraq War supporter in ostensible cognitive decline. Amy Klobuchar consistently wins elections in Minnesota by a wider margin than the state’s partisan lean would predict. Cory Booker is an amiable orator with a gift for inspiring documentaries about himself and rescuing freezing dogs. Beto O’Rourke came within a couple points of beating an incumbent senator in Texas (and he’s starting to get really good at cursing). Steve Bullock has managed to win elections as a pro-choice, pro-labor, pro-gun safety Democrat in Montana. And Pete Buttigieg is easily the most lifelike android that Democratic consultants have ever manufactured.

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None of these candidates inspire euphemistic whispers about whether they’ve “lost a step.” None has a half-century worth of controversial congressional votes that Trump’s henchmen can cynically exploit.

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