The Democratic hopefuls for the 2020 presidential election have united in calling for action on guns, but this is one instance in which Joe Biden is taking a harder line than some of his counterparts.
Biden, in a reversal of his previous insistence that he could work with Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans, says it's not possible to reach a compromise with Republicans on guns. He says the only solution for new gun safety legislation is to "flat-out beat them" in 2020. No compromise, he says. "None, none on this. I think this is no compromise. This is one we have to just push and push and push and push and push. The fact of the matter is, I think this is going to end with some of them defeated." It's good that Biden is taking this hard line, to show that he can do it, but taking the Senate in 2020 isn't quite enough, not unless Democrats take an almost unimaginable 60 seats in the chamber. It will also take getting rid of the legislative filibuster, something Biden has opposed.
This is an instance in which one of Biden's closest rivals in the polls—Elizabeth Warren—diverges from him. Warren says there's room for compromise with Republicans now, even if it might fall short of expanded background checks. "Could they agree to do some things and not that one? Look, that's part of what making legislation is all about," she said in New Hampshire. Her fellow senator Bernie Sanders is calling for background checks as well as a new assault weapons ban and is pointing directly at the problem in the Senate. "We are telling Trump and McConnell, listen to the American people and not the NRA," he said.
Another candidate, Amy Klobuchar, says that background checks are "the minimum that we should do. […] Then we should go to something that will make the biggest difference for the mass shootings," such as an assault weapons ban. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg agrees that background checks are the minimum that should happen, and that Democrats have "to get out of a defensive crouch" on the issue. "The overwhelming majority of the American people are with us, and the congressional G.O.P. can only reject the American people's desires for so long before they're going to pay a political penalty for that. […] We've got to get something real out of this."
Biden and Buttigieg have the luxury of being on the outside right now, not responsible for trying to make something happen legislatively this year. The senators in the mix seem very much aware of both the politics of the Senate and the desire to get something done now, and also the centrality of the issue for 2020. None, contra Buttigieg, seem to be in a defensive crouch about calling for tougher measures beyond background checks, including an assault weapons ban.