Is Joe Biden the politician we want representing the Democratic Party? Let’s have a look at where Biden stands on the issues Democrats are supposed to care about:
Consumer Protection
Warren entered the political arena fighting Joe Biden over predatory banking practices. Warren on Biden in a scathing New York Times op-ed
Do politicians like Mr. Biden who support the bankruptcy bill believe they can give credit-card companies the right to elbow out women and children so long as they rally behind an issue like abortion? The message is unmistakable: On an economic issue that attracts millions of dollars of industry support, women have no real political importance.
Biden went up against Obama to defend predatory financial practices:
Biden was one of five Democrats in March 2005 who voted against a proposal to require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Mr. Obama voted for it.
Mr. Biden also went against Mr. Obama to help defeat amendments aimed at strengthening protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military;
And he was one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Mr. Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.
Cutting Social Security
As early as 1984 and as recently as 2018, former Vice President Joe Biden called for cuts to Social Security in the name of saving the program and balancing the federal budget.
Biden teamed up with Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley to call for a freeze on federal spending, and insisted on including Social Security in that freeze, even as the Reagan administration fought to protect the program from cuts.
"When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well; I meant Medicare and Medicaid; I meant veterans' benefits; I meant every single, solitary thing in the government." — Joe Biden defending the proposed balanced budget amendment, January 1995
A few years later, at a Brookings Institution event in April 2018, Biden addressed Social Security again. “Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code. What’s the first thing he decided we had to go after? Social Security and Medicare. Now, we need to do something about Social Security and Medicare,” Biden said, then added in a whisper: “That’s the only way you can find room to pay for it.”
School Integration
Delaware senator broke ranks with northern liberals— and joined his virulently racist North Carolina colleague Jesse Helms in voting to kneecap all federal efforts to integrate schools, anywhere in the country. Specifically, Biden voted to bar the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from requiring schools to provide information on the racial makeup of their student bodies — thereby making it nigh-impossible for Uncle Sam to withhold federal funds from school districts that refused to integrate.
The NAACP called Biden’s proposal “an anti-black amendment.” The Senate’s sole African-American member, Ed Brooke, called it “the greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964.” But Biden helped his fellow liberals reconcile themselves to the wrong side of history by recasting integrationists as the real racists.
As of 2007, Biden believed that this stance had aged well. In a memoir released that year, the soon-to-be presidential candidate derided busing as “a liberal trainwreck.” Education experts disagree. Since some municipalities did integrate their schools through busing (however temporarily), while others did not, scholars have been able to evaluate the policy’s efficacy. In 2011, researchers at Berkeley found that black students who had spent five years in desegregated schools went on to earn (on average) 25 percent more than those who remained in segregated schools (or, in Biden’s phrasing, schools that honored the “black awareness concept”).
Sexual Harassment and the Supreme Court
Joe Biden on his role in the destruction of Anita Hill and providing Thomas with a safe path to the Supreme Court:
“I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” Mr. Biden responded, haltingly. “If you go back to what I said, and didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly.”
Biden failed to acknowledge that, as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, he set many of “the rules” that damaged Hill and determined the over-all fairness of the process.
Among the most consequential concessions Biden made to Thomas’s team was his agreement that the committee would only examine Thomas’s behavior in the workplace rather than outside of it. As “Strange Justice” describes, there were numerous witnesses over the course of Thomas’s life who corroborated Hill’s account that Thomas liked to watch and describe pornographic films—something Thomas categorically denied. Because of Biden, this corroborating testimony was outside the scope of the hearing.
Three woman came forward willing to testify to support Hills allegations in the workplace but thanks to Biden they never got the opportunity:
They and a third woman, Sukari Hardnett, instead were allowed to submit only depositions or written statements, which went into the public record so late that few senators ever saw them—all of which was Biden’s call.
Thomas and his wife have said that Biden called them after reading the F.B.I. reports and assured them that there was “no merit” to Hill’s accusations. Further, Senator John Danforth, a Republican from Missouri who was Thomas’s primary sponsor, later said that Biden promised Thomas and his wife that, if Hill’s allegations leaked, he would be Thomas’s “most adamant and vigorous defender.”
Biden personally enabled the destruction of Anita Hill and is responsible for allowing Republicans to put Thomas on the court. A disaster we will have to live with for decades.
Gaffes and making stuff up that never happened.
Biden has falsely said he was shot at in Iraq (he later clarified he “was near where a shot landed”), that he met survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting while he was vice president (the shooting happened after he left office) and that he was arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in apartheid-era South Africa (he later said he was just detained).
Joe Biden on his paternalistic view of Black parenting:
He (Biden) was making a point about the failures of Black parenting. “We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children,” he said, touting a home visitation program begun under the Affordable Care Act. “It’s not want they don’t want to help. They don’t know quite what to do.”
Biden told students at St. Paul’s School in Concord. “When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program; I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes, and we changed attitudes.”
Biden’s aides tried, unsuccessfully, to nudge him back on script, reminding him that he had not, personally, marched, the journalist Richard Ben Cramer later reported in his 1992 book about the campaign, “What It Takes.” According to Cramer, Biden’s advisers later told him that the candidate would acknowledge the error each time he was reminded of it — and then frequently repeat it on the campaign trail.
I could fill pages with this stuff. This is not some sign of cognitive decline. Biden has been like this his whole career. But it’s a gift that will keep on giving to Republicans and the Russian troll army.
The Safe Choice?
Primaries are not General elections. Biden has gotten away with barely showing up, having no organization or ground game and anemic fund raising. Maybe Democrats are so desperate that they are willing to overlook anything to beat Trump. But Biden will not get the free ride in the general he got on Super Tuesday. The primary electorate and the general electorate are very different. Hillary won the African American vote in the primary but failed to turn out African Americans in the general election:
The Census’ Current Population Survey, released Wednesday, shows 65 percent of white citizens cast ballots in last year’s presidential election, up from 64 percent four years earlier.
But the turnout rate among African-American citizens tumbled sharply, the survey shows. Only 59 percent of black citizens voted in 2016, down from 66 percent in 2012 and 65 percent in 2008.
Crucially, the drop in black turnout was even sharper in states where the margin of victory was less than 10 points than it was nationally — in those battleground states, black turnout dropped 5.3 points. In two critical states that swung to Trump — Michigan and Wisconsin — black turnout dropped by just more than 12 points. Declines were less dramatic but significant in other swing states Trump carried: Ohio (down 7.5 points), Florida (4.2), and Pennsylvania (2.1).
nymag.com/...
Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms and it resulted in a resounding victory for Democrats.
Among 18- to 29-year-olds, voter turnout went from 20 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018, the largest percentage point increase for any age group — a 79 percent jump.
The young are now a bigger voting block than older voters. How is Biden doing with that cohort of voters? Awful. Probably the last guy you would pick if you were looking to get young voters to the polls.
So this is the face of the Democratic Party for the 21st century? A politician with Biden’s record? Trump and the Russian bots are going to have a field day using Biden’s awful record, gaffes and fabrications to depress turnout. Whoever turns out their base wins. We failed to get the base out in critical swing states in 2016. Biden’s message seems to be “I’m not Trump”. I know I screwed you with multiple votes over decades but hey, Trump is worse, right?
Maybe Trump is so bad that’s enough this time. But that’s a huge risk. And beyond that, if the Democrats are offering the worst of the politics of the 90’s as a solution for the next century? Then the party has no future.