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This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick.

A new political weather has swept into Washington, D.C., and it's taken nearly everyone by surprise.

Uncharismatic, aging, gaff-prone, hyper-cautious, centrist Joe Biden, has taken on an unlikely

role, the leader of modern Rooseveltian liberalism.

But back up a little bit, in the months before the election, the majority of the Democratic

electorate was more or less united in its disdain for the Trump presidency.

But what of the Democratic Party's nominee?

Sure, Biden was preferable to the race-baiting,

neo-authoritarian in the White House, but who exactly was he? How would he lead? He lacked charisma,

and in ideological terms, he was familiar, centrist, a Capitol Hill veteran with plenty of

bad marks on his historical report card.

And when he compared himself during the campaign to FDR and the potential of his presidency to the New Deal,

who really took that seriously? Certainly not the left wing of the party that supported Bernie Sanders

and not too many others either.

...