Joe Biden Has Been Saying 'It's Not Your Father's Republican Party' For Years

[DonViejo]

The history of the former vice president’s favorite line.
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By Paul Blumenthal

“Folks, this is not your father’s Republican Party,” 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden likes to say when he’s actually on the campaign trail these days.

It’s a familiar line ― paraphrased from your father’s ad industry ― that the former vice president and longtime senator has repeatedly deployed over the years to convince swing voters that the GOP isn’t for them anymore.

“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said campaigning for a Senate candidate in 2018. “They are not who we are. They are not who America is.” Not with their “phony populism” or “fake nationalism.”

“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” he said in 2011. “This is a different breed of cat.”

“Today’s Republican Party is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said in 2010. “It’s the party of the tea party. … I’m not questioning their integrity. I’m questioning their judgment.”

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-not-your-fathers-republican-party_n_5cefedd5e4b00cfa19677923

[elleng]

1. and he's been right every time.

[KPN]

6. That line didn't work for Claire McCaskill or Joe Donnelly in 2018. And it didn't work in 2014.

He is right, but it isn't going to influence voters.

[The Mouth]

21. Or, you could say

he is right, but it isn't sufficient as a message unto itself.

[KPN]

22. Agreed.

[elleng]

35. obviously not sufficient, but surely part of the mix.

[Nuggets]

30. Seems to be working out well for him.

It’s not like he’s saying a noun a verb and “this isn’t your father’s Republican Party.”

[elleng]

36. Right.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Today's Republican Party would nauseate even Barry Goldwater.

[The Mouth]

41. Nope

They want to overturn Wickard.

[Quemado]

3. It's a cancer and America needs chemotherapy.

[MineralMan]

4. It's a good strategy for him.

And, as we're seeing from the polls, he's doing pretty well with his strategy, which is low-key at this point.

Biden's pretty old-school, when it comes to campaigning. He's going to go for the stable, feel-good issues that have a broad, general appeal. With poll numbers in the high thirties, and double digit leads over his closest competitors, why would he do anything else?

In a field of 24, holding that kind of lead is actually pretty remarkable this early in the campaign. He is apparently appealing to voters who are being ignored by the rest of the candidates, most of whom seem bent on attracting the leftmost bloc of voters.

Since the 15% rule is going to hurt lower-placing candidates throughout the primaries and caucuses, the battle for viability for the other 23 candidates is going to be fierce. Since any candidate who wins less than 15% of the votes in any primary district gets zero delegates at the convention, Everyone not already at that number is going to be fighting for their political life as a presidential candidate.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden just has to hold onto his double-digit lead and build on that. He already is doing well enough to add delegates to his count, starting from the very beginning. The only other candidate who polls at above 15%, really, is Bernie Sanders, and he is dipping under that number in many state polls.

If there's one thing Joe Biden knows, it's how this Democratic Party system operates. That's one of his great advantages, along, of course, with being Barack Obama's Vice President for eight years.

All of that is why his face is at the bottom of my posts this early.

[caraher]

20. That's all great as far as winning the nomination

If this were about betting on who wins the nomination, I'd totally agree with you. But my pick isn't based on who I think has the best shot at the nomination.

I just still need to see the case that Biden would be a better president than his rivals.

I also put little stock in polls this early as an indicator of who is most likely to beat Trump. In June 2015 Hillary Clinton's lead over Trump was double what Biden's current numbers are. Sure, Hillary won the vote, but not by enough to overcome Russian interference, etc.

I'm not convinced "old school" politics is a winning formula in November 2020, when it matters. We need to energize our voters. Offering comfort to the disappearing center is not enough on its own, even with a raving lunatic as the opponent.

[MineralMan]

27. The voters will decide, in both cases.

That's the bottom line. It will be up to us to help voters turn out at the polls. In the primaries, GOTV doesn't do much good. Primary voters are the hard-core of the voting public. They are the people, like me, who vote in every election, no matter what.

After the primaries, though, the party with the best ability to get people to the polls in every state is the party that elects the President. Trump is in the White House because of low turnout in just three states, PA, MI and WI. I don't think we're going to see the "Anti-Hillary" phenomenon in 2020, but we're sure going to see and anti-Trump boost in turnout.

Who wins the primaries will be the Democratic candidate. Whether you like that nominee or not really doesn't matter at that point. But, the election matters, so getting other Democrats out to vote will make all the difference. I'm hoping people learned from 2016. If not, things could get pretty bad over the next few years.

I say, let the primaries be a free-for-all, but then it will be time to dig deep and bring out the votes, regardless of our nominee's name. A lot depends on it.

[caraher]

29. "let the primaries be a free-for-all"

Yes. And as you say, unite strong behind the winner

[MineralMan]

31. That's how we win.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

5. What exactly has changed?

My father voted for Reagan in 1980. That's almost 39 years ago. A lifetime for many people. Over half a lifetime for me. The Republican Party then was the shit it is now in almost all respects.

Racist, misogynistic, homophobic, all around bigoted, and dedicated to further impoverishing the impoverished while further enriching the rich. Reagan then. Trump now. The Tea Party is just more upfront about it, and was a response to Americans electing an African-American president.

Putin? That's new. But the rest is the same. Don't pretend the Republican Party hasn't been shit for a very long time. They are proud of it.

[Demit]

10. We have been assured by Joe Biden that once he is in office, Republicans will have an epiphany.

[Hortensis]

13. Not to worry, Demit. He's not threatening

any unrequested epiphanies for non- Trump voters.

[Demit]

14. I honestly don't know what that means. Could you say it another way?

[50 Shades Of Blue]

16. ::: Smacks forehead ::::

[Hortensis]

11. What's changed is that the worst of what they were

has become dominant, not just undercurrents in many and overt noise from a relative few. They've been developed into (almost) the worst possible versions of their political selves in order to enable and support the worst in those they put in power. AND supplied with increasingly bad leaders to enable.

"Almost" because they could be much worse, of course. Those who study them say many may only be an unleashed, viciously authoritarian leader and a political riot to join away from supporting genocide, but that's still a huge distance between the worst of them now and the potential.

Most on the right believe they are good people politically, and with far better leaders to follow for most that could once again be mostly true.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

15. Point is they're long been and still are BAD. What's he going to do to fix things?

[Hortensis]

28. Maybe listen to him again? We are a substantial

majority in national elections and have been for some years now. What we need is only a few percent more to become a sustainable, dominant majority that can win elections in spite of the Republicans' electoral college advantage.

So what Biden is going to do is try to pick up a few more percent from both previous nonvoters and, as we're talking about here, from among the very large pool of conservative indies who are embarrassed to identify with the Republican Party but haven't been ready to finally break with it.

And hopefully then, because just "winning" an election must be sustained, to continue on to grow a new, stable working center made up from both parties that will do a much better job of protecting the soul he speaks of from those trying to destroy it. Biggest, by far most important ambition of all those announced by our candidates, but only what we used to have and must again.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

32. I have been listening to him. There's no way to appeal to Republicans without sacrificing everything

Democrats hold dear.

NONE.

[The Mouth]

23. in other words

One Reichstag fire.

[Politicub]

18. I'm in my mid-40s, and I have never seen this benevolent republican party

Republicans have stood against civil rights and progress for my entire life. The forms of media have changed, so the more conservative republican views are getting an airing.

But they've never been a party that's more than white anger, sexism and government destruction. The tea party was a natural outgrowth of conservatives reacting to our country's first African American president. Because they could not call Obama a welfare queen without seeming insane, as Reagan famously slurred black welfare recipients in the 80s, they banded together in white mobs to shout down any democrat holding a town meeting.

Every republican administration, again, in my life, has been followed by a recession. Every republican administration takes the country to war. Every time.

Now, Trump made open racism de rigueur amongst republicans, but it was always there, simmering below the surface.

Maybe this mythical unicorn party existed in the first half of the 20th century. Ha ha -- who am I kidding? The party has been garbage for a century.

[JI7]

26. there used to be liberal republicans and racist Democrats.

they have switched over the years .

[yardwork]

39. I agree with you, but there's a whole mythology about Reagan.

It's a false mythology, of course, but a dearly held belief by millions of Americans. I think it's good strategy of Biden to attract people who may feel fondly about the past (even though they're wrong).

[LibFarmer]

40. WHat has changed is that

there are no more "Rockefeller Republicans" who were liberal on social issues but conservative on fiscal issues.

They are all gone now.

What we have now is a bunch of charlatans feeding off a racist, angry base out for blood. Those people would call Reagan a centrist and Eisenhower a liberal.

[SMC22307]

7. I dunno, I work with a couple of die-hard Reaganites who now...

fully embrace Dirty Don. I see many in their 30s and under who have embraced Ben "My Wife is a Doctor!" Shapiro and Charlie "No Facts" Kirk and they couldn't care less about the way-back GOP. They are getting a lesson though, as Ben was thoroughly trounced by BBC's Andrew Neil, who didn't break a sweat.

Biden pointing this out may work on some, but not all. But it's worth a shot.

[Hortensis]

24. It'd be a big deal for all of us to turn away from the group we identify with

and the leader chosen by our group, but it's typically even harder, to for some effectively impossible, for conservatives.

But Biden's not exactly chasing unicorns. Many are unhappy and worried about the shift from Reagan to wannabe fascist dictator Trump, and most would be one good leader away from doing an about face in the other direction. Not that they'll get that leader.

But more and more conservatives have been dropping their Republican label in the past few years and becoming less strongly supportive indies, and last November, Trump-Repubs and we caused suburbs across the nation to turn blue and some rural areas turn pink.

So I so agree it's worth a shot. Any leader who didn't go for it would be appallingly negligent, but Biden's trying to leverage his warm fuzzies and relative trust into a winning majority, not just the substantial one we've been for a long time.

[jalan48]

8. Is any Republican actually listening?

[Demit]

9. The line is so old that by now Biden should be saying it's not your grandfather's Republican Party.

As the story points out, the line was first used by conservative Paul Gigot in 1995.

[IronLionZion]

12. Who is he trying to convince?

their party has been shifting hard right for several generations because that's what their voters want. Reagan got widespread support from labor and other working class folks he decided to screw once elected.

Most of Trump's support is from older rural people. Is Biden trying to flip middle aged suburban voters?

[MineralMan]

17. Biden is going after the center.

He's trying to pick off some disgruntled Republicans and reassure centrist Democrats who make up the true base of Democratic voters.

It's working. Look at his poll results.

The goal is to win an election. Without doing that, nothing gets accomplished. So far, he seems to be on the right track.

[ancianita]

19. This isn't about judging the age of voters he'll bring back. This is about WHY. He's the only

candidate who knows how to both outsell Trump AND reconstruct what Trump has destroyed.

This idea that he shouldn't win is just fooling oneself into the mistaken notion that the other candidates have his skillset of judgment, governing and decisionmaking. They don't. Not yet.

One term. That's it. That's all he wants. Then the progressive VP and cabinet he puts in place (exposed to the skillset of decisionmaking that he has, and exposed to how his politics of governing works) can take over from then on.

[Skya Rhen]

33. Such a wise analysis - excellently stated!

[Voltaire2]

25. But it is.

There is a straight line from Reagan to Trump. The cultivation of white supremacists started with Nixon.

Biden is going after a center that doesn’t exist.

[ancianita]

34. Right.There's no center. But he's not going after the hardcore supremacists. Just people evolving.

His saying "It's not your father's..." is just trying to get everyone to look and act on today's reality more than hang on to some family politics.

[Voltaire2]

37. It's a backward looking strategy chasing

a tiny segment of the voting population.

[Uncle Joe]

38. We don't know who the father is but

but the mother...is in the White House.


Thanks for the thread DonViejo

[aikoaiko]

42. That's what they want, Joe.