Joe Biden Is Better in the Written Word

Joe Biden had a couple of rough debates. Then there was that flub about poor kids and white children. And weirdly talking about meeting the students who survived the massacre at Parkland in 2018 when he was vice president and he wasn’t? He’s had a rough go of the irl communications thus far in the campaign.

On Sunday night, he published an op-ed with The New York Times that was much more straightforward: Basically, Biden wants to ban assault weapons because it works. (Duh.) And written Joe Biden is much, much more convincing — at least this time.

His writing takes us through a li’l timeline, including President Donald Trump repealing a rule then-President Barack Obama put in place to keep guns out of the possession of some mentally ill persons; and how Biden led the effort to enact the 1994 assault weapons ban with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

In short, written Joe Biden has a PLAN (or at least a stump speech for you to read):

The 1994 assault weapons and high-capacity magazines bans worked.

And if I am elected president, we’re going to pass them again — and this time, we’ll make them even stronger. We’re going to stop gun manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor modifications to their products — modifications that leave them just as deadly. And this time, we’re going to pair it with a buyback program to get as many assault weapons off our streets as possible as quickly as possible.

I won’t stop there. I’ll get universal background checks passed, building on the Brady Bill, which establishing the background check system and which I helped push through Congress in 1993. I’ll accelerate the development and deployment of smart-gun technology — something gun manufacturers have opposed — so that guns are keyed to the individual biometrics of authorized owners.

There is so much we can do — practical, sensible steps that draw broad support among the American people. But we will see only more and deadlier shootings if we continue to dodge the core issue of unregulated assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in our communities.

I’m not sure the op-ed goes far enough to be inspiring to everyday voters, but maybe I’m just cranky and reminiscing about 2008. I mean, remembering “Yes We Can” doesn’t really jive with Biden’s “practical, sensible steps that draw broad support among the American people.”

But after nearly a month of various auditory flubs, maybe “practical” and “sensible” written words is really what his campaign needs.