"Sleepy Joe"

      “Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign."

Trump, the Alpha Male Bully

 Trump has been calling Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe."

Trump has been successful at negative branding insults. It is schoolyard taunting, and the public is both shocked by it, and accepts it as legitimate. It positions the candidates and is a first test over whether an opponent knows what to do in a fight.

Trump is bringing the matchup with Biden to the frame that Trump brings every contest: manhood.

It is a fight over who is the real alpha male leader.

"Sleepy Joe" is an attack on Biden's age, without quite saying age. It is an attack on Biden's vigor. Most of all, it is an attack on Biden's leadership. The Sleepy Joe insult exploits a genuine vulnerability of Biden, based on Biden's actual, undeniable biography and history. 

The insult will stick. Trump will likely think of a worse one.

1. Biden's origin story includes his being the young man who won a senate election before turning 30, whose wife and daughter was killed in a car crash, and who--devastated by the loss--nearly quit before serving. He had to be cajoled into doing his duty. Weak.

2. Biden's history as defined by Anita Hill and MeToo is that as Judiciary Chair he failed to defend a vulnerable woman with an accusation against workplace harassment. He failed to protect a damsel in distress--the archetypal job of a leader-hero.

3. Biden declined to run in 2016, which allowed Hillary the nomination instead of him. He hesitated. He didn't step up. Sure, his son died. Real heroes use tragedy as inspiration. It motivates. They don't take a time out. 

4. Biden waited until now to file, when there were about 18 other Democrats. Real leaders lead from the front. Biden is stepping in, behind the crowd. Follower.

Behind and out of focus. 

5. Biden served as Vice President. Again and again Biden played the role of Second Banana, the guy standing beside the leader and one step back. The understudy. The guy who keeps his mouth shut and follows the company line set by the leader.  

The beta-male.

Joe Biden does not present as physically weak or un-animated in the way that Jeb Bush did. "Sleepy Joe" is less direct an insult than would have been "Second Banana Joe" or "Follower Joe." We may see Trump move to something more pointed. The Trump technique is to try out material in front of crowds and see what works. "Lock her up!" wasn't part of the early Trump rally talk. It became standard because the audience heard it and liked it and began chanting it.

Joe Biden is affirming the "Sleepy Joe" meme in one other way. Unique among the Democratic candidates, he is reading a speech. 

Worse, he is reading it and stumbling over words, the 3-syllable words. Every other candidate--including Trump from his earliest New Hampshire speeches--speaks extemporaneously, i.e. apparently from the heart. It appears to document genuine belief, spilling off the tongue so eloquently.

Click and scroll down: 4 minute video

As an up-close witness to multiple talks by multiple candidates, I observe  it is obvious that nearly every word candidates speak are well-practiced. They have said them before, told the same story in the same way perhaps two hours prior in a nearby city, and perhaps told it for the fiftieth or hundredth time in a month. It sounds authentic because they have thoroughly integrated them into their psyche. 

Biden's verbal stumbles come across as incompetent, that too old to learn his lines, and inauthentic. Biden was asleep-at-the-switch for the one job he had decades to prepare for, telling the story of how he planned to lead America. 

Trevor Noah attempts a humorous description of it, but I don't consider it funny. It is political malpractice. It helps validate Trump's insult. A real alpha-male leader knows why he is there and it comes from the heart. He doesn't read a speech. 

Biden can repair this, but he cannot fix this. You have only one chance to make a first impression.