October surprise: Biden’s zipped lips

Biden has finally learned, at the tender age of 77, to shut up and stay on message (yes, sometimes by staying in his basement). To nearly everyone’s surprise, he has run one of the most disciplined presidential campaigns in recent memory.

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For decades, Biden has enjoyed — or perhaps his opponents have enjoyed — a reputation as an undisciplined windbag. In a (largely positive!) 1985 profile of the then-senator from Delaware in the New Republic, Brit Hume described Biden taking 10 full minutes to ask Alexander Haig a single question during Haig’s confirmation hearing to become Ronald Reagan’s secretary of State. The headline: “Mighty Mouth.” Sixteen years later, Michael Crowley wrote in the same magazine of Biden’s “Castro-length speeches” as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after 9/11.

Yet Biden 2020 has been so focused and undeviating that his closing message is quite literally his opening message. In between his April 2019 announcement of his candidacy and today, we’ve seen an impeachment, a primary brawl, a pandemic, BLM protests, mass unemployment and more. Through all that, Biden’s strategy hasn’t altered.

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