At a fundraiser in New York attended by the usual Wall Street types, Joe Biden said some things that are raising eyebrows, for good reason, on two subjects. His comments on his friendly relations with segregationists are getting the most attention, but he also said something important about the wealthy people whose dollars he was seeking.
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You know, what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change. Because when we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. [...] It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the other, the other. You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down.
WaPo
You won't, Joe. They know that.
His pitch to them is not that we must reduce inequality because it’s a fundamental wrong, but because if we don’t, the masses will rise up in anger and you never know what might happen then.
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He believes that you can govern well without attacking the wealthy or big corporations, in both substance and rhetoric.
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The problems we’re facing right now didn’t happen by accident. Biden says he’s a great friend to labor unions, but does he think that the Republicans and their corporate partners can be persuaded to abandon their war on collective bargaining with enough backslapping and reassurances that “nothing would fundamentally change”?
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Now let’s look at the even more startling thing Biden said at the fundraiser.
First, Biden recounted being at a caucus with the late Mississippi Sen. James O. Eastland. Imitating his southern drawl, Biden said: “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son’.”
You're white, Joe. "Boy" is reserved for black men.
In fact, Eastland was friendly toward Biden in no small part because at the time Biden was an opponent of busing.
Biden then brought up deceased Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge and called him “one of the meanest guys I ever knew.” Biden added:
Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.
One reason all this is so objectionable is that much of Biden’s career was built on him being the kind of Democrat who could speak to and for white people who felt dispossessed by societal change, particularly around issues of race.
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Which means that when he’s running to be the presidential nominee of the party that represents pretty much all nonwhite Americans, Biden needs to be especially thoughtful about how he talks about his friendships with people like Eastland.
If you aren’t familiar with that history, Eastland was one of the most prominent segregationists in America. Here’s an excerpt from Robert A. Caro’s “Master of the Senate” about the Montgomery bus boycott (h/t Tim Dickinson):
Montgomery’s blacks kept on walking even when ten thousand people attended a White Citizens Council rally in the Montgomery Coliseum — “the largest pro-segregation rally in history” — to hear Mississippi’s senior United States Senator, James O. Eastland, shout that “In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking n------ … African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives … All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead n------.”
And I read somewhere that Joe has a majority of black votes over other Democratic candidates. How is that possible?
It takes more than calling a segregationist “mean” to assure us that Biden really gets that these men he worked with didn’t just have political differences with him and weren’t just personally unpleasant, but had devoted their lives to a project of monstrous evil, the subjugation of millions of Americans because of their race.
But let’s try again to be generous to Biden. The point he was trying to make is that if he could work with a racist like Eastland to “get things done,” surely he can convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to do the same.
But there’s a problem with this logic, which is that Eastland and other segregationists were perfectly happy to pass legislation on any number of issues that didn’t impede their agenda of white supremacy.
Today’s Republican Party is not. If there’s a Democrat in the White House in 2021 they will employ the same strategy they did under Barack Obama of obstructing everything that president wants to do, as Biden ought to remember.
I'm guessing Biden thinks they did it beause Obama was black, and since he's not, they'll work with him.
Biden continues to believe that his friendships with Republicans are so profound and his powers of persuasion so overwhelming that he can transform the Republican Party, altering the course it has been on for decades.
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There is no reason, based on everything we’ve seen over the past couple of decades, to think he’s right. And we also have to ask what moral compromises he’s willing to make along the way.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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