To the extent Joe Biden is capable of actually formulating coherent sentences — always a questionable proposition — he challenged Bernie Sanders in Thursday night’s Democratic nomination debate in Houston in a way that Sanders has never really been forced to grapple with during either of his presidential campaigns.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s position meant that she didn’t need to aggressively attack Bernie. Had she tried, she would’ve almost certainly brought up the fact that he is a self-described ‘socialist’. That’s common knowledge by now, of course, but it’s a salient point for Bernie’s rivals to press him on. Democratic voters generally like Bernie, but his ‘socialism’ could give them pause — especially given that the overriding issue Democratic voters are concerned with is ‘electability’, or who can defeat Donald Trump in the next election.
That doesn’t mean Biden himself is inherently ‘electable’.
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