Biden was appropriately little more than a footnote in my chapter on the 1988 campaign. His 2008 campaign didn't end in disgrace, but merely faded into obscurity; his career was revived by Obama. Biden's contribution to the party debate has been to put himself on the wrong side of the issues with a startling consistency. One would think that just by chance, given a career that spans a half-century, he'd manage to get a few things right by accident. Even his most uncontroversial accomplishment, the Violence Against Women Act, was tucked into the Biden Crime Bill, which played a major role in juicing mass incarceration.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Biden was appropriately little more than a footnote in my chapter on the 1988 campaign. His 2008 campaign didn't end in disgrace, but merely faded into obscurity; his career was revived by Obama. Biden's contribution to the party debate has been to put himself on the wrong side of the issues with a startling consistency. One would think that just by chance, given a career that spans a half-century, he'd manage to get a few things right by accident. Even his most uncontroversial accomplishment, the Violence Against Women Act, was tucked into the Biden Crime Bill, which played a major role in juicing mass incarceration." in the context of "Ryan Grim, We've Got People (2019) p393-4" to mean that wisdom is timeless.