'Trump's opposite': Rolling Stone endorses Joe Biden for president

Two days after the New York Times published a profile entitled “Joe Biden’s Non-Radical 1960s”, the Democratic nominee for president picked up the endorsement of Rolling Stone, a magazine founded as a bible of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll at the height of the counterculture, in 1967.

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“We’ve lived for the past four years under a man categorically unfit to be president,” the magazine’s editorial board wrote of Donald Trump, whom Biden leads in most national and battleground polls, two weeks out from election day.

“Fortunately for America, Joe Biden is Donald Trump’s opposite in nearly every category: the Democratic presidential nominee evinces competence, compassion, steadiness, integrity, and restraint.

“Perhaps most important in this moment, Biden holds a profound respect for the institutions of American democracy, as well as a deep knowledge about how our government – and our system of checks and balances – is meant to work; he aspires to lead the nation as its president, not its dictator.

“The 2020 election, then, offers the nation a chance to reboot and rebuild from the racist, authoritarian, know-nothing wreckage wrought by the 45th president. And there are few Americans better suited to the challenge than Joe Biden.”

Biden, 77, was a US senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, when he became vice-president to Barack Obama, a position he filled until 2017.

A Washington insider with a fondness for working across the aisle (and across ideological divides within his own party, controversially so when he reminisced about working with segregationists), he seemed to some voters and opponents in the primary to be too conservative for the diverse Democratic base.

But he stormed to the nomination on the back of strong African American support in South Carolina and has run a disciplined campaign, naming the California senator Kamala Harris as the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket and building both a healthy polling lead and a commanding fundraising advantage.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the American experiment hangs in the balance in the November election,” Rolling Stone said, adding that Biden “envisions a revival anchored in unity” and has “delivered more than just happy talk … leading by example in his campaign”.

Rolling Stone has endorsed before. Four years ago, founder Jann Wenner picked Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, her progressive primary challenger, writing: “Idealism and honesty are crucial qualities for me, but I also want someone with experience who knows how to fight hard.”

Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots, but lost the presidency to Trump in the electoral college.