Joe Biden’s Defenders Emerge After a Bruising First Presidential Primary Debate
Key Democrats are stepping up to defend Biden, noting that you have to look at the total package of a candidate’s record. Will it help?
After last week’s presidential primary debate, Joe Biden was widely seen as the loser after a bruising back and forth with Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) over his recent comments on working with segregationist senators and his past opinions on forced busing.
He’s already lost a top fundraiser but remains at the top of the pack in polling even though his numbers have slipped slightly since Thursday.
Now that all the smoke has cleared from last week’s dust-up, some key Democrats are rising to defend Biden, noting that you have to look at the total package of a candidate’s record rather than nitpick over what appears on the surface to be negatives.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez spoke to Fox News’s Chris Wallace on Sunday about Biden and defended the former veep’s civil rights record:
Asked in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” how damaging attacks on the former vice president’s opposition to federally mandated school busing in the 1970s could be, Perez said Biden and other candidates’ overall civil rights records are “clear.”
“Voters are going to look at the totality of everybody’s record,” Perez said. “And the reality is every single Democrat running for president on the issue of civil rights is so far ahead of where this president is.”
“Biden’s overall record on civil rights is clear, and the Democratic Party’s overall record on civil rights is clear,” he said.
Perez added that it’s up to Biden “to explain his position.”
Watch the interview segment between Perez and Wallace below:
Another Biden defender to speak out this week was former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (IL):
“We can be proud of her nonetheless, but her ambition got it wrong about Joe,” said former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman to serve in the Senate who has endorsed Biden in the 2020 primary. “He is about the best there is; for her to take that tack is sad.”
“Her ambition got it wrong about Joe” is about as close as any Democrat will come to say that Harris staged an attack, which she planned for months, on Biden due to a desire to move into the top tier.
Going into the debate, Harris knew that Biden had enjoyed steady support from the black community, much of it due to his time as President Obama’s vice president. She also knew that two legendary civil rights icons – Reps. James Clyburn (SC) and John Lewis (GA) – stood up for Biden after the backlash over his remarks about getting along with segregationist senators.
So she did what politically ambitious people do when they want to get ahead: Go for the jugular, even if it means severing alliances by way of taking some very cheap shots against one of your own.
But will Harris’s short-term gains from her Biden broadside translate into long-term success with voters? If she continues her hard left tack on forced busing, it could ultimately backfire on her. Busing has historically been deeply unpopular with the American electorate, even in the black community.
Even Harris’s kingmaker Willie Brown said the issue would give her problems in a general election matchup against Trump:
California Sen. Kamala Harris got all the attention for playing prosecutor in chief, but her case against former Vice President Joe Biden boiled down in some ways to a ringing call for forced school busing. It won’t be too hard for Trump to knock that one out of the park in 2020.
Detroit will host the next two Democratic debates on July 30th and 31st. Biden will have plenty of time between now and then to make up lost ground with black voters. But his handlers should better prepare him for the possibility he’ll have to share a stage again with Harris.
Because if they don’t, she’s likely to go all “Bend the Knee” on Sleepy Joe next time around, and it won’t be pretty.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Joe Biden’s face during that debate – I’ve seen livelier characters laid out in the box at the Funeral Parlor during visitation.
Biden will withdraw from the race before the end of the calendar year.
The democratic nominee has not yet entered the race. His first name is Mark. Last name is either Zuckerberg or Cuban.
The polls have shown that Biden is damaged but still leading so people feel safe to come out of the pillboxes. That is really all this is.
Media Polling Narrative: Crazy, Creepy, Spank-Me and How form “Top Tier”…
As anticipated the media script via democrat presidential polling narratives are now showing ‘Crazy’ and ‘Creepy’ dropping while ‘Spank-Me’ and ‘How’ gain significant positions. CNN is now calling Biden, Harris, Warren and Sanders the ‘Top Tier’.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/02/media-polling-narrative-crazy-creepy-spank-me-and-how-form-top-tier/
Ibib.
Good reading.
Check it out.
“…There’s something very Big Club and Clintonesque about the DNC framework surrounding Kamala Harris. An argument can made that she checks all the boxes for controlled candidacy. The DNC club move to re-position California in the 2020 primary could very well be the same club motive that moved Florida in the 2016 cycle for the GOP club.
Unlike the GOP in 2016, in the DNC 2020 race there are no ‘outsiders‘; so the club rules mean more control. [The DNC 2020 is akin to the RNC in 2012.]
Those who watched the Kamala Harris launch January 21st; then the Jussie Smollett fake MAGA lynching on January 29th; then the Feb 14th lynch legislation, and then connected the seemingly pushed narrative (all bearing the familiar sniff of Clinton Politcal-Ops) are undoubtedly noting how Harris’s campaign hired Marc Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group and was Hillary’s campaign lawyer in 2016…..”
Hey there, Kamala Harris’ great grandfather was a slave owner. Colin Slapstick, where are you?
Plus Kamala isn’t even African-American.
She’s Asian Indian by way of the Caribbean Slave Owning Family of hers…….
Biden is trying to pull a “Ralph Northam” and brazen his way out of this. Like Northam, Biden has (correctly) determined that in the end the MSM/DNC axis will pull its punches and let him off the hook. The MSM/DNC axis may well prefer Harris to Biden, but the goal of “communism by any means necessary” is the one guiding principle.
The irony is that a Biden presidency would be indistinguishable from a Harris presidency, which is why I find the accusations of racism against Biden so funny. Biden is a corrupt, incompetent race-baiting communist (like any other Democrat candidate), but the idea he is a KKK-style segregationist is progressive garbage.
To his credit, Joe is one of the rare people who can actually make Ocasio-Bimbo-Cortez seem plausible.
Come on, Joe Biden is a complete boob, and a dishonest and corrupt boob at that. He deserves to be exposed for it.
Kamala claims busing got her where she is. I guess there was a bus stop in front of Willie Brown’s house.
Biden had a comeback for Kamala if he was a little faster on his feet. When she said she was that little girl riding the bus Biden should have comeback with——— “And now you’re running for president! Is this a great country or what??”
Biden could turn all around if he stood up to the plate and embraced all the old Democrat Values and completely dismissed the entire pack of current Socialist Yo-yo’s
But, that would be bold.