Lexington | A blast from the past

摘要

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 dead-panned 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.