Why Attacks on Joe Biden Could Continue to Backfire

The second Democratic debate Thursday night will either prove or disprove the idea that Joe Biden is mostly Teflon when it comes to attacks against him. This might be why, incidentally, he’s a great opponent to defeat Donald Trump. Trump’s usual bullying tactics won’t work on Biden the way they will work on everyone else, from Elizabeth Warren to Kamala Harris to Pete Buttigieg. You might think that tough women can deflect Trump’s bullying but they can’t. He’s good at it. He knows where the weaknesses lie, and more importantly, he knows that enough men (and women) out there feed off that kind of cruelty.

But Biden? Biden seems to be that guy you can’t attack and come out the other side the winner, not in the post-Obama era anyway.

The main reason for this is that, despite the many missteps he’s made in the past and despite his tendency to phrase right thoughts in wrong ways — millions of people genuinely like Joe Biden. They like him a lot. You can’t really mess with that. Between mourning the death of his son, and the other struggles he’s endured in his long career as a public servant, Biden has slowly but surely embedded himself in the hearts of Americans, broadly. Black voters, white voters, men, women, young, old — they all like Biden. They like him because they know him. And knowing is probably why the attempts to call him…