Joe Biden has unequivocally been a vocal proponent of cutting social security throughout his career, according to Washington Post opinion writer Helaine Olen, a fact that Bernie Sanders is correct to point out makes Biden highly vulnerable to Trump:
In 1984, when the inflation rate was more than 4 percent, Biden called for a one-year moratorium on the program’s annual cost-of-living increase. He’s said he would consider an increase in the retirement age. He was the point person on the Obama administration attempts to reach a deficit deal with Republicans in Congress; Social Security cuts were most definitely part of those conversations.
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There is no doubt Trump and his supporters will use all this against Biden should he be the nominee. As I am forever reminding people, one of Trump’s main planks in 2016 was his defense of Social Security. It separated him from his GOP rivals and likely was a factor in why seniors supported him at higher rates than they did Hillary Clinton.
I agree, and would add that Hilary did not have the baggage Biden has on social security.
Electability is paramount in this primary. And as a Bernie Sanders supporter I am constantly being told that, while it’s well and good that Bernie consistently enjoys the strongest support from people under 50, old people turn out to vote at around 70%, versus 46% for young people.
So this is not pie, this is necessary vetting. What’s pie is the way Biden’s camp has reacted, with Biden going so far as to falsely claim that the C-SPAN2 footage had been doctored by the Sanders campaign:
Joe Biden accused Bernie Sanders’ campaign Saturday of issuing a “doctored video” to attack him over Social Security, a false claim that ratcheted up the tension between the two campaigns in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses.
“Let’s get the record straight,” Biden said at Simpson College here. “There’s a little, doctored video going around ... saying I agreed with Paul Ryan, the former vice presidential candidate, about wanting to privatize Social Security.”
But the video in question — of Biden’s 2018 remarks to the Brookings Institution think tank — was not doctored by Sanders, whose campaign this month stepped up criticisms of Biden’s record on Social Security.
Joe, stop distracting and dissembling, and face your record on this head on. We all know you were close to the benighted Simpson Bowles “catfood commission” and its work:
Biden first displayed his friendliness to GOP entitlement hawks when he appointed former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson to co-chair the president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, created in February 2010 via executive order. Simpson was one of Congress's most high-profile foes of entitlements and a proponent of Social Security privatization. In Woodward's telling, Biden even had to lightly pressure a somewhat reluctant Simpson to take the role.
So anyway, yeah here are some more videos that will become Trump ads if Biden is nominated:
Social Security is a right in US political culture, as it should be. Please vet your chosen candidate in terms of electability.
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