Joe Biden responds to controversy over his comments about segregationists - Former Vice President Joe Biden responds to the controversy surrounding his comments that touted his experience when he worked with two segregationist Southern senators. While sitting down with Al Sharpton Biden says, "The context of this was totally different. ... You got to deal with what's in front of you, and what was in front of me was a bunch of racists and we had to defeat them."
He did the same for the Iraq War by giving his vote to the GOP despite strong indications - such as information from intelligence agencies that Trump ignores today... see the pattern? - the Iraq War was a setup (indicating Biden either lacks the ability to differentiate fact from fiction, like Obama or Sanders did, or sought political gain by helping the GOP kill people for oil with bullshit. In either case he would make a bad President).
Flashback: Rep. Bernie Sanders Opposes Iraq War
Transcript: Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from New Jersey for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I do not think any Member of this body disagrees that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant, a murderer, and a man who has started two wars. He is clearly someone who cannot be trusted or believed. The question, Mr. Speaker, is not whether we like Saddam Hussein or not. The question is whether he represents an imminent threat to the American people and whether a unilateral invasion of Iraq will do more harm than good.
Mr. Speaker, the front page of The Washington Post today reported that all relevant U.S. intelligence agencies now say despite what we have heard from the White House that ``Saddam Hussein is unlikely to initiate a chemical or biological attack against the United States.'' Even more importantly, our intelligence agencies say that should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he might at that point launch a chemical or biological counterattack. In other words, there is more danger of an attack on the United States if we launch a precipitous invasion.
Mr. Speaker, I do not know why the President feels, despite what our intelligence agencies are saying, that it is so important to pass a resolution of this magnitude this week and why it is necessary to go forward without the support of the United Nations and our major allies including those who are fighting side by side with us in the war on terrorism. Read full transcript.
Just because Joe Biden was Vice President when Obama was President shouldn't be the only measure for electing him. But that's clearly what's going on. Taking credit for Obama's actions as President when his only role was to throw in a deciding vote in the Senate is ridiculous. This is not something the media should tout as accomplishments. We shouldn't be even comparing Biden to Trump, we should be looking for he most capable leader and that's clearly not Joe. Sanders is way better than Joe Biden on important issues where good intelligent decisions are required which will be an almost daily necessity as President (as the record shows). Joe Biden already has a pattern of caving to GOP demands, does anyone doubt that he will continue it? He's already taking money from maga rich anti-American GOP donors. Do you really thinking taking bribes to pass policies will stop under Joe Biden as President when it didn't under Obama or Trump?
VOX: Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020Americans want outsiders, reformers, and fresh faces, not politicians with decades of baggage.
Why nominate another Iraq hawk? In 2008, Democrats responded to the evident unpopularity and failure of the 2003 war in Iraq in the sensible way — by nominating someone who'd spoken out against the war when he had a chance.
Most of the party’s bench consists of people like Sens. Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, who are young enough not to have participated in the war debate in Congress. And if a former colleague from around the courthouse were to report recalling some stray pro-war statement, you could always say you were misled by a bipartisan foreign policy elite that swallowed a bill of goods from the Bush White House.
But what’s Biden’s excuse? He was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time — the guy with privileged access to top officials in the American government and around the world. The guy who, though he surely couldn’t have stopped Bush’s folly, certainly could have warned about it.
Foreign policy experience theoretically should be a big Biden advantage over his rivals. But in reality, on one of the only foreign policy controversies voters actually paid attention to or remember, Biden got it wrong in a big way.
To hardcore Democratic Party partisans, this kind of thing is unfair — everyone knows that a Democratic administration would not have actually launched that war, and Biden and Clinton were just going along with what was thought to be the savvy politics of the time. But that’s the problem — the party’s thinking on this issue has changed, and it’s better represented by a politician who reflects the current thinking than one who has to spend a lot of time explaining how he changed his mind.
Clinton’s fans liked to note during the 2016 campaign that if she won, she’d almost certainly be the most qualified president elected in more than 150 years.
A more sober assessment would have begun with the observation that since the founding generation passed away, voters have tended not to want to put veteran politicians in the White House. With only a handful of exceptions, the voters choose to elevate an “outsider” who’s going to “fix the mess in Washington” (or drain the swamp) rather than an inside player who’s mastered the system.
Candidates don’t get credit with voters for mastering Washington. Instead, they end up on defense, defending political decisions that don’t look great in hindsight.
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