Some big news today from ABC News Campaign Reporter, Molly Nagle, on Twitter:
More on this as the story unfolds. This is a terrific move by Biden because this was something from his past that could hurt him in his upcoming debate with Bernie Sanders:
Comments made by Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2003 about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden resurfaced on Thursday amid speculation over which campaign she'll endorse after dropping out of the 2020 race.
"Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening," Warren said in 2003, according to a book co-written by Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, called The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.
Warren dropped out of the Democratic race earlier today without immediately endorsing another candidate. The move led to speculation that she could throw her support behind Biden, rather than Senator Bernie Sanders. When reporters asked her to indicate who she would support on Thursday, Warren declined to give a direct answer.
"Let's take a deep breath and spend a little time on that," Warren said. "We don't have to decide right this minute."
As a former Democratic senator Biden was a supporter of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, a bill filled with reforms that would have made it more difficult to seek bankruptcy protection. Warren, however, believed bankruptcy could help families who were in serious financial distress.
Warren suggested that the National Organization of Women (NOW) showed public support for Biden because of his support for the Violence Against Women Act, an anti-domestic violence bill.
"Apparently, [Biden's] support of this bill trumped any concerns the group might have had over the fact that Senator Biden is 'the leading Democratic proponent' and 'one of the... strongest supporters' of the very bankruptcy bill against which NOW Legal Defense had fought so hard," Warren wrote.
It was a good move for Warren to not endorse either Sanders or Biden immediately because as Will Wilkinson from the New York Times points out, Biden would benefit the most from adopting more of Warren’s policies:
Groups that have been losing power through democratization and the equalization of rights — including the Trumpist Republican Party’s aggrieved base — as well as incumbent economic interests are keenly aware of the nature and value of power. The closer they get to losing it, the more avidly they marshal every form of heft, pull, propaganda, coercion and extortion at hand to prevent America’s political economy from locking into an equilibrium of fully inclusive democratic equality.
Yet sleepwalking liberals can’t seem to snap out of it. That’s why Warrenism’s tough-minded agenda for returning control to the democratic citizenry is so important. We argue among ourselves about whether the rise of populist nationalism reflects economic or racial anxieties (or both). We debate whether these anxieties would be best assuaged by a universal basic income, an expansion of the earned-income tax credit, or by getting the fine print of Medicare for All exactly right. What we haven’t been doing is rallying for a dogfight.
This is one reason that Sanders-style socialism picked up steam. Socialists may be in the grip of unworkable, harebrained dogma, but they see power and are ready to fight for it. They grasp that regaining democratic authority over economic power, both inside and outside the political system, is urgently necessary. And that makes socialists like Mr. Sanders better defenders of liberal democracy than many Biden-loving liberals.
I’ll be sorry to see Bernie Sanders go, but he was never going to win. Mr. Biden can beat Donald Trump. The trouble is that he can’t seem to grasp our deeper problems, so he’s counting on a de-polarizing Republican epiphany rather than preparing for a fight. That’s why Mr. Biden, and the entire Democratic Party, needs a stiff dose of Warrenism, and quick.
Warrenism is awake to power. It’s good, old-fashioned American republicanism with bite. Should Democrats take down Mr. Trump, they need to be willing to throw down for Big Structural Change. One way or another, Democrats need Elizabeth Warren. There can be no meaningful change in policy — no universal health care, no clawback of systemic corruption, no large-scale climate action — without distributing democratic power back to the sovereign American people. And that means leaving blood, teeth and shredded filibuster rules all over the Senate floor.
Biden’s move on shows that Warrenism is alive and well and needs to be fully injected into the party’s platform. Stay tuned.