Joe Biden has officially stopped pretending to be above it all with respect to criticizing his fellow Democratic presidential candidates — a tacit admission that despite the chorus of white moderates in media pretending a Biden nomination is all but guaranteed, the former vice president will actually have to campaign against the other Democrats running for president in order to become the nominee.



The Affordable Care Act was a historic achievement. 20 million Americans gained coverage. Over 100 million with pre-existing conditions finally got protection. We can’t tear it down.



So today, I’m releasing my plan to Protect & Build on Obamacare: https://t.co/RIhlOcOWK8 pic.twitter.com/laDUcIhRjM — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 15, 2019

To the surprise of no one, Biden is doing so by once again hitching himself directly to former President Obama. You see, if you support Medicare For All as Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders each do, you effectively would be dismantling the greatest legislative achievement of President Obama. That’s the message Biden is seeking to engrain in voters of a specific sort.

I would have preferred much more direct lines like “HELLO FELLOW OLDS — ESPECIALLY YOU BLACK OLDER PEOPLE! REMEMBER ME? JOE BIDEN. BARACK OBAMA, THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT’S BEST FRIEND? CAN YOU BELIEVE THOSE OTHER GUYS AND GALS ARE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OBAMACARE AND START ALL OVER? NOT ME. I WOULD NEVER DO THAT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, MY BEST FRIEND AND THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT. DON’T LET THEM DO IT, FELLOW OLDS — ESPECIALLY YOU BLACK OLD PEOPLE! LOVE YOU! MEAN IT!”

Biden is perfectly within his right to defend the Affordable Health Care Act and the legacy of President Obama given it’s the only reason he even has a shot at becoming the next president. However, I’m more concerned about the other ways the Biden campaign is trying to fight off challengers to his desired political coronation. Apparently, to be critical of Joe Biden on an issue Joe Biden brings up is to display a lack of character and overall integrity

In a recent piece published by Politico entitled “Embattled Biden ditches Rose Garden strategy,” an unnamed Biden adviser speaks to the noted shift in strategy. “I think it is true that what you’re seeing it is a more assertive time in the campaign,” the advisor explained. “He’s not going to sit back and let people distort his record, nor is he going to let people define the terms of engagement.”

By people, they mean Kamala Harris whom this same advisor referred to as a “slick and slippery person.” I would love to know the name of the coward who said this, but it matters not because in terms of “slick and slippery” behavior, Biden has shown himself to be quite adept at such antics when need be. Enter Biden’s interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo in which somebody else’s “Uncle Joe” curiously portrayed himself as the victim of an unjust attack by that mean woman who used to be friends with his now-deceased son.

“I was prepared for them to come after me, but I wasn’t prepared for the person coming at me the way she came at [me]” Biden told Cuomo about Harris confronting over his invocation of segregationists whom he worked anti-busing legislation with as a testament to the virtues of a more “civil” time in Washington. “She knew Beau, she knows me,” Biden added.

Dick Harpootlian, a top Biden South Carolina surrogate, former state Democratic Party chair, echoed the sentiment to Politico. “It’s not right, it’s distressing. It shows a lack of integrity: win at any cost,” Harpootlian argued. “Why is she taking that shot when Joe Biden and his son did everything they could to help her? It was more of a comment about her than it was about Joe Biden.”

White people as a collective enjoy many hobbies related to race, but among the fan favorites, one is reminding us Negroes that we sholl ought to be grateful when nice white folk like Joe Biden do us a favor.

Whose fault is it that Joe Biden wasn’t prepared to discuss the comments made by Joe Biden in recent weeks? How is Harris wrong for asking the astute question as to whether the best person to defeat the current bigot in the White House is an old white man who speaks fondly of the times he used to work with the bigots of yore?

This is why I didn’t like Joe Biden’s apology because he said he was sorry “for any of the pain of misconception that caused anybody.” There was no misconception; we knew what Biden meant and many of us rightfully took offense to it. Regardless as to whether or not Kamala Harris knew Joe Biden or worked with his late son, that does not absolve him from lodging his foot down his throat in order to babble about the good old days when he worked with the good ole boys.

To wit, in response to Biden’s apology, Cory Booker has also commented on the half-assed apology, saying: “I am frustrated that it took so long but I am grateful for [Joe Biden] doing this… I’m sorry we had to go through all this. I am sorry at one point he tried to shift blame to me.”

Lucky for him, it’s Harris who is perceived to be the bigger threat, thus the more aggressive attempts to give her an unfavorable narrative.

Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, is no better than her husband for purposely misrepresenting the crux of Harris’ criticism. “The one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he’s a racist,” she said in that same CNN interview. “He got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights, and then to be elected with [former President] Barack Obama and then someone is saying, you know ‘you’re a racist.'”

It’s not what Harris said, but some white people are far more concerned about the suggestion of being racism than the actual impact of racism – no matter its strain – has on its victims.

Kamala Harris reiterated this in an interview with The Breakfast Club that aired last Friday.

“I’m not going to let us engage on a debate stage for who’s going to be the next president of the United States — I’m not going to allow us to engage in revisionist history,” Harris said.

If I were apart of the interview, I would have asked how does Kamala Harris feel about Joe Biden basically trying to convince old Black folks she’s like one of the light-skinned working professional villains as seen in like a Tyler Perry production.



As for Beau Biden, Harris said he was a “dear friend” and an “incredible person and incredible human being.” She went on to note, “When I was battling the big banks, Beau stood with me.”

When it comes to criticizing his pops: “So, through Beau I got to know his father, mostly just because of the love that they share for each other. That’s separate from the fact that segregationists in the United States Senate stood and lived their careers to segregate the races and public education in the United States. And that I was one of those many children who was personally impacted by that.”

While I always understood that one poor debate performance alone was not going to end the Biden campaign, I find it very telling that his first real challenge came from a Black woman and his response to that has been to not only shift the blame to her but to make her out to be “shifty.” If anything, we could be having a nuanced conversation about what busing meant, how we measure “civility” and its overall purpose then and now in the Trump era — specifically on what “compromise” should and should not entail in our politics.

Instead, we are being asked to be made to feel bad for Joe Biden because I guess only the feelings of a white man matter. Joe Biden may not be as bad as Donald Trump, but if he intends on winning the nomination and beating that devil, he might want to stop acting like such a snowflake. And he best get his staff in order as this sort of character assassination reminds me of the way The Clintons treated Biden’s bestie Barack Obama back in 2007.

We see how well that turned out.

