The New York Times came close, but not quite there, to recognizing the real reason why former Vice President Joe Biden is fending off a sudden torrent of attacks from Democrats and their allies in the press.

In an article published Friday, the Times rightly notes that the 2020 Democratic primary front-runner is suffering a sudden onslaught of criticism aimed at his long record as a professional politician. The chief complaint against Biden right now is that he regaled an audience this week with an anecdote fondly recalling his working relationships with late segregationist Dixiecrats Sens. James Eastland and Herman Talmadge.

The Times report also notes correctly that the criticisms directed at Biden over these anecdotes seem odd, considering the former vice president has been using them for years to highlight his ability to find a civil middle ground with even unrepentant racists.

So what changed? This is where the Times misses its moment. The report, titled, “Biden Has Not Changed. The Politics, Culture and Mood of His Party Have,” manages somehow to blame it on President Trump:

[If] Mr. Biden remains the same character he was two and a half years ago, the political and cultural environment around him is utterly different. Democratic politics is now defined by a mood of emergency, and a give-no-quarter ethos on issues like racial justice and abortion rights where liberals view their fundamental values as under assault.



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Stories that voters once heard as folksy tales of the last century’s Senate no longer sound so benign to an electorate convulsed by President Trump’s blunt appeals to racial animus. A majority of Americans believe race relations have worsened under Mr. Trump, and liberal constituencies appear far less receptive to the idea that even the worst racists can be negotiated with.

Uh, not quite.

The issues that Biden's 2020 competitors are highlighting now are not new. As noted in the Times article itself, he has been telling stories about working with famed segregationists for years. Biden even eulogized Sens. Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd with no professional repercussions whatsoever. What has changed is that Democrats and their allies in the press have decided his transgressions are no longer worth ignoring or defending. What changed is that there are younger and more exciting Democratic candidates running for the party’s nomination, and Biden is long past his expiration date — as Trump once put it, pulled by former President Obama off Washington's garbage heap.

What changed is that reporters are willing now to aid certain 2020 Democratic candidates by running opposition research whose release has been timed to inflict maximum damage on the front-runner.

The excuse that Biden’s dusty anecdotes are problematic now because of Trump is laughable on its face. First, it suggests that Trump is responsible for the intersectional sensibilities that seem now to be dogging Biden. If anything, things worked the other way around. Trump was elected in response to the intersectionality politics championed by liberals and Democratic lawmakers for at least five years now. That predated Trump by a long way and had already reached a boiling point in 2015 when Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was cowed on stage at his own rally by Black Lives Matter activists. Second, it is absurd even to believe that intersectional silliness turned Biden's career from lovable to liability. The reason Biden's transgressions were never newsworthy, controversial, or even particularly interesting to national media during the Obama era was that Biden served as vice president to a man beloved by his party and the press. Recall that Republicans who too eagerly or incautiously eulogized Sen. Thurmond actually paid a price for it. Biden paid none.

The reality is that Biden's past relationships with segregationists, which have long been known and are no secret to anyone with access to a phone or a computer, were always newsworthy and controversial. But Democrats did not want it discussed previously, and a biased press was happy enough to heed their wishes. They were not going to pursue it when Obama was in the White House because, well, you draw your own conclusions.