Alex Wagner of Showtime’s “The Circus” has released an op-ed urging Democrats to view former Vice President Joseph R. Biden as a “vessel” and an “idea” if they want President Trump defeated at the ballot box.
The writer penned “Stay Alive, Joe Biden” for The Atlantic this week, which serves as a blueprint for realizing a Democrat as the 46th commander in chief.
Ms. Wagner, who also serves as a special correspondent for CBS News, insisted Tuesday that “vanquishing” Mr. Trump will require millions of voters to see his Democratic opponent for the man he once was instead of the man he is today.
“Almost no one I came across [in my cross-country travels] said they were going to vote because someone, anyone, but especially Joe Biden, had made their heart sing,” Ms. Wanger said.
“Voters seem to have coalesced around Biden for his past — who they have known him to be for the past four decades in American politics — rather than for anything in his present,” she continued. “It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate. Democrats have chosen Biden as their vessel for Trump’s defeat, and that choice is the entire point: The vanquishing matters more than anything else.”
The conservative website Red State responded by questioning the Democratic Party’s integrity.
“What the Democratic Party is doing to Joe Biden is cruel,” the website’s Elizabeth Vaugh wrote Wednesday. “They are exploiting him. How his wife allows them to do so is beyond me. She waits in the wings to manage his slip-ups that are occurring far more frequently now. She shares in their guilt.”
Regardless, Ms. Wagner concluded that Mr. Biden’s supporters most focus on the task at hand: “Keep that idea convincing enough, for long enough, among as many people as possible, for the corporeal man to actually win.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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