Hopefully, he has two left feet because
Hill’s allegations became public just days before the Senate
was set to vote on Thomas’ confirmation. Biden initially wanted to delay the
vote by two weeks, but a GOP senator who was a Thomas supporter convinced him
that fairness demanded the proceedings move faster.
Even now, Biden can muster only a "The message I’ve delivered before is I am so sorry if she believes that. I am so sorry that she had to go through what she went through. Think of the courage that it took for her to come forward.” "Twas a shame," he says, but don't look at me."
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Joe Biden on Sunday waltzed into the backyard of potential
future opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders sounding an awful lot like a 2020
candidate.
Six days after saying he's “the most qualified person in the country
to be president,” Biden took the stage here and railed against “naked nationalism,”
“phony populism” and a GOP that is “not your father’s Republican Party.”
“If you have a problem, what’s the problem? The other. The
other. That immigrant, that black guy, that woman,” he said of populism,
without mentioning President Donald Trump by name. “That’s the problem, instead
of facing up to the problem called greed.”
Without mentioning Donald Trump by name. That is, has
been, and probably always been Joe Biden's problem. In September, Amanda
Terkel reminded us that Anita
Biden scheduled Hill’s testimony for Oct. 11, and agreed
that the Judiciary Committee would not take another vote before sending Thomas
to the full Senate on Oct. 15 ― a one-week delay. He also said he would keep
questions about Thomas’ general sexual conduct ― such as his interest in
pornography ― out of the hearings.
“Joe bent over too far to accommodate the Republicans, who
were going to get Thomas on the court come hell or high water,” Sen. Howard
Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) told Mayer and Abramson.
Biden also handed a major victory to Republicans in agreeing
to let Thomas testify both before and after Hill ― most crucially, scheduling
his response to her allegations for 9 p.m. on a Friday, when millions of people
were tuned in for their prime-time broadcast.
In the end, Biden voted against Thomas. But when he did so,
he said on the Senate floor, “For this senator, there is no question with
respect to the nominee’s character.”
Even now, Biden can muster only a "The message I’ve delivered before is I am so sorry if she believes that. I am so sorry that she had to go through what she went through. Think of the courage that it took for her to come forward.” "Twas a shame," he says, but don't look at me."
The problem, amnesiac Joe Biden claims, is that this is
"not your father's Republican Party."
It is your father's Republican Party. But accepting the
former vice-president's short-sightedness, there still is a contradiction in
his approach. Donald Trump, not the GOP, is the outrage in Biden's view.
Yet, he still won't mention the fellow's name.
That is Joe Biden's failure now. It was his failure roughly
thirty years later. The Republican Party means well, he believes. And evidence
indicates that when it doesn't, he believes Democrats can lead with a
compromise and be willing to compromise off the compromise. Even half a
loaf isn't necessary; two slices are all which are needed for a sandwich.
The Democratic Party's "go along to get along
approach," nearly perfected in the 2001-2008 era, needs to end. The
obstacle facing Joe Biden, assuming he runs for the Democratic presidential
nomination, should not be race or gender. It shouldn't even be his age- but
rather, for all those years he has been a public official, he has learned very
little.
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