Paul Krugman has weighed in on the Sanders (and now Warren) tiff with Biden over Biden’s alleged support of Paul Ryan’s plan to cut Social Security:
Not to sugarcoat it: The Sanders campaign has flat-out lied about things Biden said in 2018 about Social Security, and it has refused to admit the falsehood.
This is bad; it is, indeed, almost Trumpian. The last thing we need is another president who demonizes and lies about anyone who disagrees with him, and can’t admit ever being wrong. Biden deserves an apology, now, and Sanders probably needs to find better aides.
Krugman goes on to state that in historical interviews it’s not hard to find snippets of Biden saying Social Security could be cut as part of efforts to protect its solvency, and that this was tied to the fact that this was what Obama was saying and Biden was supporting him as his VP. Krugman clarifies that that Biden is now calling for an expansion of Social Security, which has become more pertinent as Americans have steadily lost the other “legs” (pensions, savings) of the retirement “stool.”
I support Biden and I think he’s in a good position on Social Security. The fact that he went along with his president with some statements in the past doesn’t mean those are his positions now and are certainly (to me at least) no reason not to vote for him. As for Sanders, as Krugman notes:
There has always been an ugly edge to some of Sanders’s support, a faction of followers who denounce anyone raising questions about his positions — even Warren! — as a corrupt capitalist shill. Until now, however, you could argue that Sanders himself wasn’t responsible for the bad behavior of some of his supporters.
In my opinion what Sanders did was out of bounds, and he should apologize.