The recent dustup between Senator Elizabeth Warren and former VP Joe Biden is well known: Warren released her Medicare for All plan on November 1, then, within hours:
The Biden campaign dismissed her plan as "mathematical gymnastics," to which Warren responded by defending key figures in her plan as having been authenticated by former members of the Obama administration.
"So if Joe Biden doesn't like that, I'm just not sure where he's going," she said Friday (Nov 1), adding that "Democrats are not gonna win by repeating Republican talking points and by dusting off the points of view" of profit-motivated drug and insurance corporations.
"But if anyone wants to defend keeping those high profits for insurance companies," Warren added, "and those high profits for drug companies, and not making the top 1% pay a fair share in taxes, and not making corporations pay a fair share in taxes, then I think they're running in the wrong presidential primary."
A few days later, in response to that counterattack by Warren, Biden posted this:
The other day I was accused by one of my opponents of running in the wrong primary. Pretty amazing. On one level, it is kind of funny.
I have fought for the Democratic party my whole career. I know what we stand for, who we stand with and what we believe. And it’s not just policies or issues. It’s in my bones. That’s not something everyone in this primary can say.
And it’s gone on from there, but I want to focus on Joe’s claim that he’s “fought for the Democratic party my whole career,” and that he knows “who we stand with,” because in the last election cycle, 2018, three weeks before Election Day, Joe Biden was paid $200,000 to give a speech to a GOP crowd, and in that speech he lavishly praised GOP Representative Fred Upton, R (MI-06) who was in the tightest race of his career.
Let that sink in, folks. 2018 was a direly critical election year for Democrats. The GOP, for the previous two years, had full control of the Executive and Legislative all three branches of the Federal government, and in the wake of the catastrophic results of that control, the need for the Democrats to regain, at the very least, control of the House of Representatives, was beyond-imperative. It was a matter of existential necessity.
And the forecast for the Dems to regain control of the House showed that that necessity was hardly a foregone conclusion. A month before the election, 538’s polling aggregate showed the GOP with a better than 25% chance of maintaining control of the House.
Furthermore, Upton’s opponent in that race, Matt Longjohn, a medical doctor, was polling very close to Upton, and he was in that race very specifically because he was outraged at Upton’s having voted for the draconian GOP Obamacare Repeal bill. Upton had bartered his support for that bill in exchange for an amendment he sponsored which was a “bandaid on a bulletwound” to soften the GOP’s repeal of the pre-existing condition protection that Obamacare had provided — to make cruelty more palatable.
Healthcare was the banner issue for the Dems two years ago, and it was the issue that gave them their majority this session. In that crucial battle for control of the House, Joe Biden gave a huge boost to a GOP House member who had supported the House Obamacare repeal bill, at a critical point in time just before the election.
Let that sink in, as you consider Biden’s attack on Warren’s m4a plan, and as he touts his intentions to bolster Obamacare if he becomes President, along with his promise to work across the isle with his “good friends” on the GOP side.
And let that sink in as you review his claim, posted above, that
I have fought for the Democratic party my whole career. I know what we stand for, who we stand with and what we believe.
This isn’t ancient history, folks; it’s not the way he left Anita Hill twisting, dismissively, in the wind back in the early 90s, it’s not how he planted the seeds for the War on Drugs and the draconian Prison Industrial Complex in the 80s and 90s, or how he put millions of folks into financial straits because of their medical costs with his Bankruptcy reform bill in 2005. This is not ancient history at all (as if that’s a rational reason to refrain from criticizing a candidate, as Biden would have it, anyway).
It was just 13 months ago when the Dems needed every single win they could possibly get.
Longjohn, btw, lost by only 4 points in that race; it was by far the tightest of Upton’s long career.
Here are the final 3 paragraphs of an NYT piece about that speech:
Mr. Lester, the local Democratic chairman, said he strove to contain the damage. In an email to Mr. Biden’s staff, Mr. Lester implored the former vice president to back Mr. Longjohn: “Surely VP Biden did not intend to endorse Mr. Upton and slight the local Democratic candidate here,” he wrote.
Mr. Longjohn, the former national health officer of the YMCA, said in an interview that he had been disappointed to see Mr. Biden “clap Mr. Upton on the back in an establishment political way.” He said his campaign had reached out to Mr. Biden’s staff through an intermediary, seeking to discuss his involvement in the race.
“There was nothing but silence,” Mr. Longjohn said. “We had just requested a phone call and there was no response.”
Senator Warren said (albeit somewhat indirectly, it should be noted) that Joe Biden is running in the wrong Presidential primary. I think she’s got a very salient point.
And, unlike “Uncle Joe,” I don’t think “it’s kind of funny.” But that’s not surprising as I certainly don’t share his sense of humor.