She also recalled that Sanders in 2016 claimed she was “unqualified” although she “had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me.” She warned, “I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who’s going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we’ve seen from this current administration.”.

This comes on the heels of another flap in which Sanders publicly apologized to former vice president Joe Biden for his campaign sending around an op-ed accusing Biden of corruption — a rare moment of contrition for Sanders.

And in yet another blowup over Sanders’s honesty, his attempt to insinuate that Biden favored Social Security cuts (taking a sarcastic comment out of context) was rated false by pundits and fact-checkers. Paul Krugman of the New York Times blasted Sanders for this move: “The Sanders campaign has flat-out lied about things Biden said in 2018 about Social Security, and it has refused to admit the falsehood. This is bad; it is, indeed, almost Trumpian.”....

Warren wants to “fight” while Buttigieg wants to “bring people together.” Sanders thinks capitalism is crooked and capitalists are crooks; Klobuchar wants to be the president not for half of America, but for all of America. To some extent, this contrast is the difference between leading a movement where getting things done and making deals are irrelevant (or even a sign of weakness!) and trying to govern in the messy world of real politics wherein the other party will never vanish and disagreements will divide even one’s own party.

If Sanders is feeling the heat now, it is only because his critics and competitors are sick of giving him a free pass to present himself as an honest, pure idealist while playing Trumpian politics. Put differently, two women — Warren and now Clinton — have had enough of his thinly disguised misogyny.

The New York Times editorial board’s presidential endorsement — complete with a hyped reality-TV show to announce the winner (though there wasn’t one) — is objectionable on many grounds. It oozed with self-importance while failing to actually endorse a candidate (instead it gave the nod to both Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, since it is so hard to choose, you see). It was condescending. (“[Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg] showing in the lead-up to the primaries predicts a bright political future; we look forward to him working his way up.”) It made itself, videoed in its august boardroom in the clouds of the New York skyline, the story while showing off its lack of connection to those who live beyond the confines of the five boroughs. (One is reminded of the famous New Yorker cover “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” portraying everything beyond New York City as a vast wasteland.)

In providing this self-parody, the endorsement raises a serious issue about the media’s perception of Democratic voters. Of Joe Biden, it declared, “Mr. Biden maintains a lead in national polls, but that may be a measure of familiarity as much as voter intention.” It is hard to imagine anything more contemptuous of voters, African American voters specifically, who are deeply attached to Barack Obama’s vice president.

We are to believe Biden’s supporters (including, in some polls, the majority of African American voters in the primary electorate), simply do not know better? They do not mean to support Biden, the theory goes. They just remember the name.

Indeed, race and support from critical non-white voters do not figure in the non-endorsement/dual-endorsement. This is not meant as a criticism of either Klobuchar or Warren, but of the cluelessness in evaluating a Democratic nominee able to beat President Trump without so much as a nod to the essential support the nominee will have to inspire among African American voters.....

Perhaps that nominee will be either Warren or Klobuchar. Perhaps one of them, or another contender, will capture the support of African American voters. However, ignoring these voters and showing disdain for their political choice tells us more about the endorsers than it does about any candidate. And it explains why the media remain baffled by Biden’s staying power at the top of national polls.

Biden is currently the lead candidate among Democratic primary voters, according to a July 22 poll from Morning Consult. Biden tops the list with 33%, followed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with 18%; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with 14%; and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., at 13%.

Biden’s campaign calls for making Social Security solvent. Currently, the program’s trust funds are expected to be depleted in 2035, at which point it will pay just 80% of promised benefits. His campaign also calls for preventing any cuts to retirees who are receiving benefits.

To achieve those goals, Biden’s plan calls for raising taxes on the wealthy by “asking Americans with especially high wages to pay the same taxes on those earnings that middle-class families pay.”

Notably, the plan specifically rejects proposals to privatize the program or introduce means testing, whereby benefits would only be provided to individuals below a certain level of income or wealth.

For policy wonks like me, the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign offers a smorgasbord of interesting ideas. But as a four-time White House appointee, I know it will take more than a pile of plans to achieve progress: We need a leader who can make those plans a reality — and a president who can heal the gaping wounds Donald Trump has left in our country. For me, that candidate is my former boss, Joe Biden.

Joe Biden is the complete opposite of Donald Trump. Decent. Loyal. Compassionate. The stories of him consoling those who have lost friends or family members; reaching out to children who suffer from stuttering (as he did as a boy); taking extra time at the White House to show kindness to someone feeling down, are too numerous to count.

Even critics acknowledge these qualities in Biden but say this is an old-fashioned kind of politics: out of sync with the era of social media and Twitter snark. I disagree. As I see it, there has never been a time when the sort of decency that oozes out of Joe Biden is more needed. It’s the salve that can start to reverse the savagery of the Trump era....

But what I know about Joe Biden is this: After suffering searing tragedies — the death of a young daughter and his wife in a car crash in 1972, his own near death from two aneurysms in 1988, the tragic loss of his oldest son in 2015 — he remains the most optimistic person I have ever met. Even in these dark times, in what he calls the “battle for the soul of America,” he is willing to take the heat to try to win that fight, because he believes our country’s best days are ahead, not behind. I’m proud to be on his side.