Joe Biden's announcement video was positively ingenious. He chose not to lay out a litany of fresh policy proposals — a la Warren, Harris, Sanders, and others — which would never go anywhere, anyway, given obstructionist Senate Republicans. He chose instead to remind us of who he is: simply a decent human being, which is the greatest contrast to the inhuman creature who now occupies the Oval Office.
This he reminded us by recalling one of this nation's lowest moral points: Trump defense of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., 2017, as "very fine people." "I knew the threat to our nation was unlike any I’d ever seen in my lifetime," said Biden. "We are in the battle for the soul of this nation."
“I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time," continued Biden. "But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen."
Those are powerful words and an even more powerful exhortation: We can cut Trump's inhumanity to four years and return to being a people of historical decency and dignity, or we can entomb ourselves in a new normality: one of a rogue, unethical nation of authoritarianism and fascist leanings.
Fresh policy proposals will come from an activist Democratic House. But Biden is selling something far more critical to the future of this country: a return to a high moral plane. Which this country needs more than anything.