For a very long time in American politics, there was a truism about running for president of the United States: You were supposed to run to the extremes during the primaries, and then you were supposed to run toward the center in the general.
That made perfect sense. The idea was to consolidate a base in the primaries to overcome your primary rivals, and then run toward the center because that’s where the independents were.
And the truth is that in every American election, the winner was the person who won the independents. The sole exception came in 2012, when Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama with independents, but it didn’t matter because enough of Obama’s base voted that he was able to win.
In every other race, independents have decided the election.
Joe Biden is deciding to buck conventional wisdom. He is not running to the center. Instead, he’s believing all of the…
