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Well over an hour into November’s lukewarm primary debate, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden provided the heat of embarrassment in an answer discussing on-campus violence against women. Toward its end, Biden started a sentence on domestic abuse appropriately: “No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman.” Then came an unfortunate clause:

No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman in anger other than in self-defense and that rarely ever occurs. And so we have to just change the culture. Period. And keep punching at it and punching at it and punching at it.

In text, Biden’s comment is not great — perhaps more appropriate for the 1919 debate than the one occurring this century. And though the former vice-president did say that he would reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, he probably didn’t need to raise his hands to illustrate the need to violently struggle against the crisis of domestic abuse.