Opinion: Sleepy Joe Biden has given Donald Trump a wake-up call – The Globe and Mail

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford

I know Joe Biden. Not well, but well enough to have a good chat when we ran into one another at the Irish embassy in Washington on St. Patricks Day last year. I must also confess to rather liking Mr. Biden. In 2015, I argued that he would win if he ran the next year.

Yet, in 2020, there has been something about his campaign that has been, well, off. One example: He was speaking last Monday at a campaign event in Texas. The crowd was fired up; their man had been on a roll since winning South Carolina two days earlier. And this is what he said: We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are ... created by the ... go ... you know, you know, the thing.

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I hope you dont need me to tell you that Thomas Jeffersons preamble to the declaration of independence is a little more eloquent than that.

Earlier this year, The Atlantic ran a sympathetic story about Mr. Bidens boyhood stutter, suggesting that this was the reason for his verbal stumbles although Mr. Biden himself kept telling the author that this wasnt the problem.

Mr. Biden is 77 years old and it really, really shows which only adds to the mystery of his political comeback. Prior to his victory in South Carolina on Feb. 29, Mr. Biden appeared to be out of it in both senses. By Wednesday morning, he was back where he began last year: the front-runner. Not only did Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar drop out last week, but they promptly pledged their support to Mr. Biden. Most recently, former Democratic hopefuls Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have endorsed the former vice-president.

There have been primary comebacks before; indeed, an election year is incomplete without at least one. I remember vividly, as one of John McCains advisers in 2008, glumly anticipating his exit from the race only for his almost-broke campaign to turn around and propel him to the nomination after he won New Hampshire. It was that same state that made Bill Clinton the comeback kid in 1992.

But Mr. Biden lost New Hampshire, finishing in ignominious fifth place. To find a comeback this late in the game, you need to go back to the 1996 Republican nomination contest, when veteran Kansas senator Bob Dole went into the South Carolina primary having lost three states to the conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan.

The kingmaker then was Carroll Campbell, the states popular Republican governor. Just as House majority whip and South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn did for Mr. Biden, Mr. Campbell went all in for Mr. Dole, signalling to the voters in the state and nationally that he alone had a shot at beating the incumbent president. Mr. Dole won South Carolina easily, after which he won every remaining contest with the exception of the Missouri caucuses.

Of course, Mr. Dole went on to lose to Bill Clinton, so this is an analogy Mr. Biden would probably prefer to have a senior moment about. Yet, I am not so sure he would lose to Donald Trump if nominated.

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The other key take away from last week is that the majority of black voters backed Mr. Biden last week and not just in South Carolina. As the brilliant African-American writer Coleman Hughes tweeted: The fact that black voters went overwhelming for Biden is only surprising if youre unaware that black dem voters are way more conservative than white dem voters. The progressive activist class may feel itself to be channeling black Americas politics, but its not.

In the coming months, the virulence and lethality of COVID-19 will almost certainly matter more than Mr. Bidens charm and incoherence. A large outbreak in a U.S. state and/or a recession caused by the global shock of the potential pandemic could make Mr. Trump a one-term President.

St. Patricks Day is nine days away. If the luck of the Irish holds, Mr. Trump is about to be hit by a cross between Hurricane Katrina and Lehman Brothers, and the man he derides as Sleepy Joe will duly oust him from the White House.

And if COVID-19 hits only the Democratic states of the coasts? If the economy stalls for a quarter but doesnt crash? If the message sticks in the Midwest that the epidemic was a hoax? Then I fear we are in for one of the least intelligible concession speeches in you know, the thing.

Joe Biden hopes to take a big step toward the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday when six states cast votes, while Bernie Sanders aims for an upset win in Michigan that would keep his White House hopes alive. Reuters

Niall Ferguson/The Sunday Times, London.

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Opinion: Sleepy Joe Biden has given Donald Trump a wake-up call - The Globe and Mail