The Joe Biden experience

Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. And — counting the votes of people, not just land — it won’t be close. If current trends hold, Biden will see a larger popular vote margin than Hillary Clinton in 2016, Barack Obama in 2012, or George W. Bush in 2004. 

Commentary over the past few days has focused on the man he beat, and the incompetent coup being attempted in plain sight. But I want to focus on Biden, who is one of the more misunderstood figures in American politics — including, at times, by me. 

Biden has been in national politics for almost five decades. And so, people tend to understand the era of Joe Biden they encountered first — the centrist Senate dealmaker, or the overconfident foreign policy hand, or the meme-able vice president, or the grieving, grave father. But Biden, more so than most politicians, changes. And it’s how he changes, and why, that’s key to understanding his campaign, and his likely presidency. 

Evan Osnos is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, a sharp biography of the next president. Osnos and I discuss: 

The mystery of Joe Biden’s first political campaign

Why the Joe Biden who entered the Senate in 1980 is such a radically different person than the Joe Biden who ran for president in 2020 

What the Senate taught Biden

Biden’s ideological flexibility, and the theory of politics that drives it

The differences between Biden’s three presidential campaigns -- and what they reveal about how he’s grown

The way Biden views disagreement, and why that’s so central to his understanding of politics 

How Biden’s relationship with Barack Obama changed his approach to governance

The similarities — and differences — between how Obama and Biden think about politics 

Why Biden is “the perfect weathervane for where the center of the Democratic party is.” 

Biden’s relationship with Mitch McConnell

How Biden thinks about foreign policy

Why Biden has become more skeptical about the use of American military might in the last decade 

And much more.

Book recommendations:

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

The Field of Blood by Joanne B. Freeman

The Ideas That Made America by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen 

Credits:

Producer/Audio engineer - Jeff Geld

Researcher - Roge Karma

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