Amid all of the angst among the right and certain media enables about Biden's laughing, etc. is a fundamental truth: Biden was doing what Democrats should have been doing for a long time: Treating Republican ideas with scorn and derision.
In my diary Am I missing something, I asked whether the basic issue in this election is very simple:
The vast majority of Americans support Social Security and Medicare the way they are now.
Republicans want to privatize social security and voucherize medicare.
This is not new. Most of us should be familiar with what President Eisenhower wrote in 1954:
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
The only difference is that the Republicans have been relatively successful in (1) promoting deficit hysteria to justify eroding those programs; (2) couching the erosion in misleading terms; and (c) lying about what Dems have done ("cut $716 billion!").
Why have they succeeded (at least until now)? Because of what Democrats (and the media) have not done until Biden showed them --
Treat Republican ideas with scorn and derision.
Not only are the Romney/Ryan ideas cruel and a betrayal of the New Deal, they don't even make sense on their own terms ("What loopholes?" "What savings?")
So thanks, Joe, for showing that Ryan's and Romney's ideas are worth nothing but scorn and derision.