Let me start off — Joe Biden is not my first choice for the Democratic nominee. He is not on my Top 3 list. My top 3 consists of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. The reason why Biden does not feature is first and foremost I am not enamoured by the idea of an octogenarian going for re-election in 2024 — this is the same reason why I am a no on Bernie Sanders. The Presidency ages you physically and mentally even if you spend the entire term tweeting and golfing. The other reason Biden does not feature in my top 3 is because after 2016 and the vicious campaign against Hillary I think having a woman on the top of the ticket the next time around is a good thing and these two women do so on merit. Beto features lastly because I think he can flip Texas which would be huge but that’s another topic.
However there is something about the negative Biden stories that have irked me a little. This is a man who for eight years was a heartbeat away from the job. For eight years he was a loyal aide and counsel to our 44th President. And for eight years he was “Uncle Joe”. Now all of a sudden he is this conniving bogeyman of the Democratic Party? A closet Republican?
We all knew he is not the most artful communicator. And that came to a head this week with his comments on segregationist senators. Now I think in full context it is pretty clear what he was meaning — that as a young senator in the 1970s some of the people in Congress, in his own party were segregationists and you can oppose those views and you can argue about them but ultimately the voters sent them back into office every election and the voters send you back into office to get things done. And to get things done you have to talk, engage, work. James Eastland was a nasty bigot but sadly he was also the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 21 years meaning he had power. What’s the relevance with today? Biden gets ridiculed for thinking he can work with the other party but he may well be doing so believing there aren’t the ugly characters to the extent of James Eastland anymore. That if he could work as a freshman Senator with people like that then working with opposing figures as the oldest ever President who chaired the Judiciary Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, was a Senator for 36 years and Vice President for 8 years is easier for that experience. The conclusion may well be wrong but I can see the thought process.
My next point is on the subject of bipartisanship itself. None of this would be an issue if we can win back the Senate to go with the Presidency, and retain control of the House. Because then we have a super majority which has happened very rarely in the last 50 years. And then a Democratic congress with a Democratic President can enact a progressive agenda without having to reach across to dissenters. That is the ideal scenario. How do we make that happen? You cannot treat all senate races up for grabs as one size fits all. For example people may not like Joe Manchin but he makes his state a safe seat for the Democrats no matter if he is not ideologically in tune with the changing wind of the party. His opponent to the left of him in the primary last year got trounced. There are red states we can flip if we have the correct strategy. And if we succeed we’ll have the votes to make Mitch McConnell an irrelevance.
Finally I want to go back to Biden and an observation I have been seeing. It seems because he is known for gaffes coupled with the spotlight of the frontrunner has put a rod on his back. I have noticed that a lot of the Biden "shock" stuff come from social media. Take that incident where he complimented a young girl's appearence. It is not right and it is outdated conduct, but he did not just randomly pick her out as twitter reporting made it sound. When he held her shoulder it was to point out where the press were. Why? Because this was a Education town hall and the mic went around the crowd. She got the mic to ask the question but before Biden asked what her favorite subject is. She said journalism - Biden responds "wow that's great, a free press is indispensable for a healthy society blah blah blah" then shows her the press area where NYT, Washington Post etc are telling her she can one day be one of them or one day be President of the United States. Then she asked her question which Biden took seven minutes to respond. It's on video. That never got reported. The story was Biden and personal space again.
Similarly while reporters are able to dig out obscure quotes from the time Gerald Ford was President, this video has barely any visibility. I posted about this last week because I remember that subject as it happened. Margaret Thatcher's government branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist and opposed economic sanctions on the Apartheid regime because it would hurt British business interests. Ronald Reagan similarly opposed sanctions and this lack of international action emboldened a murderous regime. The House had previously tried to pass a bill on sanctions with the view the regime would dismantle but Reagan already made it known he would veto a bill because it inteferes with his administration's foreign policy (which had done nothing to help the situation). George Schultz, Secretary of State, at a Senate hearing got a blast for this stance. None more so than from Biden.
Damn it, we have favorites in South Africa. The favorites in South Africa are the people who are being repressed by that ugly white regime. We have favorites. Our loyalty is not to South Africa, it's to South Africans. And the South Africans are majority black, and they are being excoriated. It's not to some stupid puppet government over there. It is not to the Afrikaner regime. We have no loyalty to them. We have no loyality to South Africa. It's to South Africans.
Also during the Reagan years, the Administration and the Civil Rights Commission (est.1957) had many disagreements over policy and lack of diversity in federal appointments. In 1983 Reagan decided he would fire three members of the commission and replace them with three new members of his choosing. He had already changed Chairman to a more ideologically similar figure. The problem was this was an executive overreach into an indepedent commission. And Biden stood against it at the confirmation hearing of the new members. Not opposing the new members but opposing the rationale. Interestingly while he reiterated his opposition to busing which has been reported now, he said he supports affirmative action proposals (receiving a 100% rating from the NAACP)
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To conclude, I will not be voting for Joe Biden in the primary. But I believe a man of his lengthy career which certainly carries baggage, also carries strengths. It is important to note that. I didn't go into his opposition (and reasonable success) taking on the NRA. I didn't go into his foreign policy mettle in the 90s dealing with Milosevic and the genocide in which Bill Clinton was honoured as commander-in-chief just last week in the 20th anniversary. He is not a closet Republican when metrics show that his positions over the eras he has been in politics rank him at worst bang in the middle. My preferred candidate was a registered Republican until age 47. I am not holding that against her because I am looking at how she has evolved as one of our most progressive allies since. But I will not attack a lifelong democrat in doing so.