Interesting statement from uber-Establishment potential candidate for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden:
Speaking to the Concordia Summit on public-private partnerships in New York City, Biden mentioned his potential rival in an aside about lingering issues with the economy.
“If you take a look at everyone from the IMF to Standard & Poors, the greatest concern they have about economic growth is the concentration of wealth,” Biden said of the International Monetary Fund and the credit ratings agency. “Listen, I’m not Bernie Sanders. He’s a great guy, by the way. No he really is. I’m not a populist. But I’m a realist.”
The vice president continued by saying that it’s in the interest of employers to compensate their employees well so they can go out and buy the goods and services their companies produce.
So he acknowledges that there is widespread concern about income inequality and the concentration of wealth, he's just not willing to lead an effort to do anything to fix it beyond asking employers to pay their employees more.
Yeah right, that's going to just happen if he asks nicely.
Good to know that Biden's a "realist" who accepts that that's just how things are.
::Shrug:: you can't expect someone in my position to actually go around raising hell in order to try to do something about it, like Bernie Sanders is doing.
Change that's meant to benefit the average person just isn't a realistic thing any more for politicians to promise and to promise to fight for, apparently, if you're a centrist, status-quo politician like Joe Biden.
It's interesting because it cements the idea that as the consummate Democratic insider, he's thinking about running against Sanders, not Clinton, and that, as many have supposed, he's ready to step in if Hillary falters, but not if it might mean splitting the centrist vote and helping Bernie win the nomination.