Biden should keep ignoring the media's hectoring

He's too moderate. He's too old. He's not campaigning enough. He's got a problem because of his support for the crime bill. He's not talking to the media enough.

With all of this media chatter, you would think that former Vice President Joe Biden needs to undergo one of those resets that a couple of his challengers for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have been forced to undergo. You would never guess that he was, at least in one poll, leading in New Hampshire by 21 points over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and by 27 points over Sanders in South Carolina. Moreover, reports Politico:

"In head-to-head matchups between the top two vote-getters, Biden's lead grew to 55 points over Sanders in South Carolina and 44 points in New Hampshire - a state that the neighboring Vermont senator won in his insurgent 2016 bid against Hillary Clinton.

"The surveys also showed that Biden's name ID of nearly 100 percent among likely voters in both states was nearly as high as that of the other candidates, who were recognized by at 8 in 10 voters or more. Biden, however, was better-liked by voters in both state polls. ... In all the polls, Biden leads the others in every category of voter: young, middle-aged, old, white, black, male, female, well-educated and less-educated."

Virtually every Democratic presidential candidate who is polling above a few points has been trying to drive down Biden's appeal among African American voters by making hay out of his support for the 1994 crime bill (which they contend led to mass incarceration, especially of young African American men). Even President Donald Trump, the most openly racist president in my lifetime (one who called for the reinstatement of the death penalty following the case of the African American men known as the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted of a heinous rape in 1989 - and never retracted that call, even after they were exonerated) has gotten into the act.

Is it working? Not so far, according to Politico: "Biden's appeal among African-American voters is particularly strong in South Carolina, where his being the loyal No. 2 to the nation's first black president appears to be paying dividends. Even though he's facing two African-American candidates in (Kamala) Harris and (Cory) Booker, Biden gets 40 percent support from black voters in the open-ended ballot test - slightly more than among all voters."

Well, plainly Biden has to change everything he's doing - but only if you believe the political pundits and not the raft of polling available at this stage in the race. What he is doing now - focusing on Trump as if the general election had already begun, taking in support even from Republicans in response to Trump's invoking Kim Jong Un as a character witness against Biden and slowly rolling out big policy initiatives (Tuesday was education policy day) - seems to be working extraordinarily well.

This is not to say that Biden is home free. Hours of debates, thousands of news cycles and mounds of opposition research lay between him and the first votes being cast in Iowa next February. That said, while debates might be the best avenue for his opponents to knock him down a peg, they might not be a very effective venue. With as many as 10 candidates on the stage, candidates will be hesitant to use up precious seconds attacking Biden - and looking churlish in the process.

Moreover, someone should ask former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan what kind of debater Biden is - tenacious, aggressive, disarming and dominating all come to mind. (You'll recall that Biden ran roughshod over Ryan in the 2012 vice presidential debate.)

Also take a look back at Biden's performance against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2008. It was as disciplined a performance as he has ever given, without losing his Scranton shtick. A quintessential Biden answer:

"Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years. ... Look, the people in my neighborhood, they get it. They get it. They know they've been getting the short end of the stick. So walk with me in my neighborhood, go back to my old neighborhood in Claymont, an old steel town or go up to Scranton with me. These people know the middle class has gotten the short end. The wealthy have done very well. Corporate America has been rewarded."

Years before he lost his son Beau to brain cancer, Biden was able to work in his own life story as a way of bonding with those experiencing hardship. ("I understand what it's like to be a single parent. When my wife and daughter died and my two sons were gravely injured, I understand what it's like as a parent to wonder what it's like if your kid's going to make it," he said in the 2008 debate. "I understand what it's like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says, 'I've got to leave, champ, because there's no jobs here. I got to head down to Wilmington. And when we get enough money, honey, we'll bring you down.'")

In sum, Biden is in an enviable but not unassailable position. However, Biden opponents who think they can make up ground in the debates might be surprised to see that debates have been a strength, not a weakness for him. Whether Biden is still as sharp and effective as he was in 2008 and 2012 remains to be seen. Just don't be surprised if he is very, very good on that debate stage.