Those who chose Biden as the "safe" bet better be willing to overlook his flaws come November

I suppose after Joe Biden won handily the Florida, Illinois and Arizona primaries that it is a fair question to ask if Bernie Sanders should just “drop out.”  Of course, nobody told Ted Kennedy in 1980 or Jesse Jackson in 1988 that they should just “drop out” for the “good” of the party, but it is a measure of the Democratic establishment’s fear that the longer Sanders stays in the race, the more his supporters will become intractable and Biden’s flaws will become more apparent than they already are. We have to remember that Biden ran for president twice before, the first time in 1988 when he was forced to drop out before the primaries even started, and in 2008 when he received one percent of the vote in Iowa and promptly ended his campaign. 

Biden’s sole point of credibility now is that Barack Obama chose him as his running mate, supposedly because Biden would attract “working class” voters. I don’t think that Biden actually provided that “benefit,” especially in places like western Pennsylvania; rather, I think that just enough working class white voters saw Obama as more naturally attuned to their problems than, say, Mitt Romney and his “47 percent.” We are told that working class voters have abandoned Sanders, which may be more due to the fact that Biden isn’t Hillary Clinton; I hear stories now that Clinton may accept a Biden offer for VP—but that would be a major mistake, since Clinton’s “baggage” would be like the chains of Marley’s Ghost for Biden.

I admit that unless something really drastic in the dynamics of the primary occurs, that Biden is a “lock” for the nomination. As a Sanders supporter in both 2016 and 2020 who is “young” only in mind, and who because of his “ethnicity” knows the moral and ethical hypocrisies of this country all too well, I have little expectation that a Biden administration will be much different than Trump’s in the way that many so-called “real” Americans have scapegoated and demonized Hispanics with claims of  ingrained “violent criminality,” which is especially “ironic” when it comes from the black people who are primarily responsible for putting Biden over the top in the primaries. Since at least the 2006 mid-term elections, the image of “mean-looking” Hispanic males used in right-wing political ads was enough to inflame paranoia in many voters, and the continuing lack of a “liberal” Hispanic voice in the mainstream media only allows such attitudes to freely fester—since the media focused on illegal immigration and not the systemic racism behind it. For me, something “radical” in this country’s thinking had to occur, and that is now a forlorn hope.

Since I don’t see Biden as being personally corrupt or a pathological liar like Clinton (and Warren), if this is what Democrats fearful of the real change in moral and ethical philosophy that this country is in desperate need of actually want, then I say if this is what you people want, you better put your votes where your mouth is and follow through in November. My biggest fear now is that people voted against Sanders more than they voted for Biden without really thinking things through, and Biden’s past “issues” will return to the fore and turn-off some voters who were inclined his way. For now, the need is to get the morally and ethically corrupt Trump out of office before he causes any more damage; for me, it is less about supporting Biden with all his flaws, but pointing out that the “alternative” is much worse.