We have over a year to go before the 2020 elections. Biden is the frontrunner now in 2019, but it's not a given that he will be the front runner in June 2020. Meanwhile, Warren and others are getting out there and building support. We have not need to choose the lesser of two evils to beat Donald Trump.
Thanks, Beebo. I wasn't suggesting that you would need to hold your nose and vote for him -- I just don't know enough about the electoral politics to comment.
Rather, I noticed the article and thought, "wow.. that really would make it very difficult to vote for him in the primaries, no matter what people say (rightly or not) about his being well-placed to beat Trump". I was going to post just that, and then I thought about something I'd written earlier about Brexit (and expect to be writing again quite soon, depending on how things turn out in the UK in the next few days and weeks) and thought I'd add that.
I think my general point is that while I appreciate the importance of electoral mathematics as well as anyone, mainstream political parties on the left need to beware of courting the other side's voters to the extent that their own loyalists get pushed too far.
I notice that Joe Biden is a Catholic. Nothing wrong with that -- so was I, once -- but I have to contrast his attitude with that of another Catholic, the UK's Ann Widdecombe, who used to be a loony right-wing front-bench Conservative and sometimes junior minister and has now come out of retirement, God help us, to become a MEP for Farage's Brexit Party.
She once said, which I thought was perfectly reasonable and proper, that her religious convictions would prevent her taking almost any ministerial position in our Department of Health because they would conflict with her party's bipartisan position that whether or not to have an abortion is a matter for the woman to decide, not legislators.
That is, her opposition to abortion would prevent her taking particular jobs, not that her party should change its policies to accommodate her religious views. That, to my mind, is how it should be.
So I wouldn't accept his religious views as an excuse for his position -- if his personal views on abortion are incompatible with those of his party, then if he's a man of any principle he would accept that this disqualifies him from seeking any high office that might force him to compromise them to what he considers an unacceptable extent. It shouldn't mean his party have to compromise their views to accommodate him.