Sen. Cory Booker stung former Vice President Joseph R. Biden with streetwise putdown in the debate Wednesday.

“There is a saying in my neighborhood that you are dipping into the Kool Aid and don’t even know the flavor,” Mr. Booker said, eliciting laughs and cheers from the crowd.

The crack also stopped Mr. Biden in his tracks after he accused Mr. Booker of presiding over a heavy-handed police department as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

Mr. Biden used the criticism of stop-and-frisk policing in Newark to deflect criticism of his leading role in a 1994 federal crime bills that have been blamed for mass incarceration of black Americans.

“We have a system right now that is broken, but if you want to compare records, and I am shocked if you do, but I am happy to do that,” Mr. Booker said.

Mr. Booker said that he inherited a police department with problems and said Mr. Biden was wrong both for him to pin the blame on him for misguided policies, and accused him of trying to turn attention away from blemishes on his record.

“You were bragging, calling it the Biden Crime bill up until 2015,” he said.

Mr. Booker told Mr. Biden that there are people serving life in prison “because you stood up and used that tough on crime phony rhetoric that got people elected” and ravaged communities like Newark.

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.