Go Blow Yourself, Joe
Biden is a terrible candidate.
His popularity is based primarily on name recognition, and his association with Obama. He’d essentially be running on the platform of “I have a black friend.”
That Biden is considered the frontrunner for the 2020 presidential election’s Democratic candidate, and has been for some time despite his not yet having officially declared his candidacy, is cause for worry among progressives, and angry frustration on the part of us who actually make an effort to research a politician’s history and policy record.
Biden made the claim in a recent speech that he is/would be the most progressive candidate running for the 2020 election. That is a lie. The thing about being in politics for roughly fifty years, is you end up building a paper trail making it easy to reveal that you are a liar, and were in fact an asshole for most of your career.
During his earlier years as a Delaware senator, Biden was an opponent of integration efforts, such as bussing programs that sought to integrate public schools.
Biden counted John McCain and Strom Thurmond among his closest friends, and he spoke at the funerals of both. Despite technically being a war hero, McCain was an otherwise shitty human being, a self-aggrandizing fraud, a warhawk, and a hypocrite, whose virtually every action in private and political decisions was one of selfish personal enrichment. And Strom Thurmond was a bigoted white-supremacist shitstain whose failed 1948 presidential campaign was built on a segregationist platform. Biden gave the eulogy at Thurmond’s funeral, where he lauded praise on the dead racist.
Now we can’t judge a person by the friends they keep. Except, wait, of course we can. That’s a great way to judge a person. Even if he’s not the worst asshole himself, it’s no surprise when a guy that spends time palling around with assholes smells like shit.
What else?
Joe Biden was a driving force in making the Democratic party tough on crime. His advocacy for Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill was among his many actions while in the senate that furthered policies which predominantly hurt the the poor and people of color. His work harshened criminalization against low-level offenders, drug crimes, and helped greatly expand mass incarceration.
Oh, and the Anita Hill hearings.
Biden has expressed regret for his actions toward Anita Hill during her hearings at the time of Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In his recent statements, Biden makes it sound as though he slipped up in 1991, like he made some uncharacteristic mistakes. What he in fact did was essentially lead an inquisition, acting as lead interrogator of a victim of sexual harassment. It’s not just that his own questions toward Hill were insensitive, that he was part of a panel of wealthy and politically powerful white males grilling a black woman, it’s that he led the misogynistic and insulting line of inquiry. Biden was the chairman of the senate judiciary committee. Nearly every part of that shameful debacle is on him.
Oh, and now multiple women have accused Biden of inappropriately touching them.
While hugging someone too long, too tightly, or holding their neck, or smelling their hair, or rubbing their shoulders, or nuzzling noses with them is not sexual assault, it’s pretty fucking weird behavior. It’s a violation of personal space and unprofessional treatment that made women uncomfortable. No, it’s not as bad as, say, Kavanaugh’s history of sexual assault, and Trump’s history of sexual assault and rape (a friendly reminder here that Donald Trump is a rapist), it is still bad. It’s still weird. It’s a problem.
Biden’s statement regarding the women speaking against his actions: "And not once -- never -- did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention."
Dude. That is not at all the fucking point. Your beliefs and intentions are inconsequential. If you throw scalding coffee from the window of your car and it splashes in the face of an infant in a stroller, whether or not it was your intention to burn and blind a baby has no bearing on the fact that you fucking did.
And you’re not listening respectfully. If you had listened respectfully, you would apologize and promise not to do it again. He made a subsequent statement that was a little better, but not good enough, it wasn’t an apology.
Biden’s statements are emblematic of a man whose attitude is one of privilege and self-righteousness without self-awareness and accountability. Get right down to it, and he’s just another rich white male, acting accordingly. He’s far from the worst offender, in politics or in general. But he’s also much further from being the best on offer.
So… when the fuck was he progressive?
How is he the “most progressive” potential Democratic nominee?
If we’re to have an actual progressive in the 2020 race, Biden needs to be taken out of the running before, or very early into, the primary.