Joe Biden provides a fossil record of how the Democrats have changed

ENTERING TO Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own”, as his friend Barack Obama used to, Joe Biden performed a dress rehearsal for his long-awaited entry to the Democratic primary in Washington, DC, earlier this month. His audience, burly delegates of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, were the sort of working-class voters the 76-year-old former vice-president is counting on to nullify the hard-left. He duly regaled them with familiar lines about Scranton, the Pennsylvanian mining-town his family fled almost seven decades ago. He also cracked gags about the recent controversy over his career-long habit of sniffing, kissing and pawing at women. “I just want you to know,” he deadpanned to the union men—twinkly old Uncle Joe style—that he “had permission to hug” their leader. If that is how Mr Biden, who enters the primary this week as the front-runner, means to handle his long and spotted history of statements and behaviour anathema to the modern Democratic Party, he might not last long.

As things stand, he owes his lead status to propitious circumstances, including the apparent lack of an outstanding alternative and his association with the revered Mr Obama. There is an obvious risk that he will fizzle as he did during two previous presidential runs, when he was an outsider and much less of a target to his opponents than he is now. Mr Biden is knowledgeable, likeable, right-minded, hugely experienced and polished in the way of an old-style variety show host. The way he glides up and down the emotional register—one moment seething, the next lachrymose—is something to behold. He is also garrulous, gaffe-prone and not obviously au fait with modern America. In other words, he has work to do, assuming he has the energy for it. Meanwhile, the suspicion that his candidacy is an anachronism makes it an extreme test-case for the Democrats’ biggest dilemma: how to reconcile the ideological purity demanded by an activist wing increasingly dedicated to racial, gender and sexual equality, with the real world of muddy compromises and more mixed social attitudes.

This tension in the party is in part a product of the erosion of its unionised base, which has left it with a more fractured coalition of hipsters, minorities and immigrants. Such diversity requires constant management, leading to an almost fetishistic attention to liberal unifying principles by Democratic activists, which engenders intolerance. This is at odds with the more nuanced views of most voters. Mr Biden’s partnership with Mr Obama—the hip son of an African migrant—bridged the gap. The question is whether the bridge can still stand in the absence of its Obama-sized pier.

Hence the early attention to the many ways Mr Biden—over the course of a career in Democratic politics that began when the party still contained segregationists—has offended against contemporary liberal standards. Early examples include his dismissive treatment, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of Anita Hill, a black woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing; Mr Biden’s disdainful attitude towards busing as a means to racially integrate schools; and his support for Bill Clinton’s draconian criminal-justice reforms. More such examples will arise. Mr Biden has a decades-long reputation for stirring controversy and his current main rival, Bernie Sanders, an emerging one for ruthlessness.

Certain kinds of past transgression are now straightforwardly disqualifying among Democrats. In light of #MeToo, Mr Clinton has become an embarrassment. The more interesting thing about Mr Biden’s case is that he does not appear guilty of anything that was considered inappropriate at the time. His mistreatment of Ms Hill reflected the usual 1980s male chauvinism. It was also intended to help a black man reach the Supreme Court bench. Similarly, some of his policy positions have come to seem controversial mainly due to ignorance about their circumstances. Criminal-justice reform in the 1990s was fuelled by a fear of violent crime that has been largely forgotten on the left. Busing was in many places counter-productive; it exacerbated racial tension and left schools as segregated but worse-run than they were before. These contradictions represent a challenge to the Democrats’ liberal mullahs which is further complicated by Mr Biden’s mercurial nature.

American politics has a strong redemption tradition. Yet Mr Biden’s career is not merely defined by a relentless and contrite movement towards more liberal positions. Rather, he has always been broadly liberal, but with a propensity to lapse. He started work on the Violence Against Women Act, one of his big achievements, a year before his mishandling of Ms Hill. This makes him, warts and all, as contradictory as most voters, and in that sense a cautionary lesson for the purist left. Whether it can learn from it, however, will depend less on Mr Biden’s record than his present skill at explaining, defending and, where necessary, apologising for it. This is also the main reason to worry about his candidacy.

Handsy Uncle Joe

“The past is never past, it is always present”, Mr Biden’s favourite singer, Mr Springsteen, once said. In the same way, political skeletons tend to do damage only when they highlight some current weakness. Mr Sanders had no trouble brushing off his patchy history on gun control because his progressive bona fides were not in doubt. Hillary Clinton’s callousness towards her husband’s female accusers was damaging, because it chimed with her reputation for cynicism. Mr Biden, who enters the race much-loved on the left, despite his shortcomings, has an easier opportunity to account for his record. He should defend his support for criminal-justice reform, explain his opposition to busing—and apologise to Ms Hill and to anyone upset by his handsiness. But does he have the contemporary political nous to make such necessary judgments and the discipline to stick by them? If not, he will fail, because those are also the biggest questions about his candidacy. That is why his recent joking about groping was so ominous.