astead herndon

In the summer of 2003, a large crowd gathers in the state capital of South Carolina for a funeral of massive proportions. There’s a horse-drawn carriage that’s gliding through the street with a casket in the back, draped in an American flag. Then the casket is brought in to a large church that’s ornately decorated with flowers and wreaths.

archived recording (dick cheney) We’re here to honor the memory of a man whose life was rich in years, whose career was filled with accomplishments, and whose calling was to serve his state and his country.

astead herndon

One by one people, step up to the microphone —

archived recording (william wilkins) A man who understood the art of compromise, but never at the sacrifice of principle.

astead herndon

— and praised the man’s life and accomplishments.

archived recording (bettis rainsford) From early childhood until the day of his death, his life was governed by a strong sense of responsibility to help his fellow man.

astead herndon

The man that they’re there to eulogize is Senator Strom Thurmond, the longest serving member in the history of the U.S. Senate. He was a noted segregationist and open racist for much of his early career, including his opposition to the early Civil Rights Act in the 1960s and his opposition to the desegregation of schools. And so, because of that history, which made Senator Thurmond a controversial figure throughout his career, it’s a little surprising who comes to the microphone next to speak at his funeral.

archived recording (joe biden) Strom and I shared a life in the Senate for over 30 years. We shared a good life there, and it made a difference.

michael barbaro

It’s Senator Joe Biden.

archived recording (joe biden) I disagreed deeply with Strom on the issue of civil rights and on many other issues. But I watched him change. We became good friends.

astead herndon

There’s a lot of moments throughout Joe Biden’s longstanding political career that point to how he views the world. But this one, when he’s eulogizing Strom Thurmond, I think, is a unique insight to how he views himself as a bridge-builder, between Republicans and Democrats, between black communities and white communities, and sees himself as someone who sees the best in people and can bring that out of them, even as his own party and maybe sometimes his own supporters doubt it.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Part 4 in our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the top four Democratic candidates for president. Today: Joe Biden. It’s Friday, December 20. Astead Herndon, you pointed us to this moment when Biden is at Strom Thurmond’s funeral, eulogizing him, as particularly revealing of who he is as a candidate today. And we repeatedly invited Joe Biden to tell us his story himself, but of the four Democratic presidential candidates that we decided to profile, he’s the only one to have declined to participate. So where do you think that this story starts for Joe Biden?

astead herndon

Well, for Biden, I think the story starts in the 1960s, in Wilmington, Delaware.

archived recording Good evening. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, 39 years old and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the leader of the nonviolent civil rights movement in the United States, was assassinated in Memphis tonight.

astead herndon

After the assassination of Martin Luther King —

archived recording The National Guard was called out in several cities to put down riots. One of these cities was Wilmington, Delaware.

astead herndon

Wilmington was one of the cities that experienced riots that changed the landscape of the city forever. And those riots really built on the racial tension that was already existing in Delaware.

archived recording But now, in Wilmington, the National Guard is still on duty. And the governor, Charles Terry, has no plan to send it back.

astead herndon

Now, folks may not know this, but Delaware has always had a pretty racially fraught history. The southern portions particularly have been compared to the more Confederate South. It would not be surprising, according to folks at the time, to see Confederate flags there. And it was one of the cities and regions that were deeply involved in the desegregation fights that culminated with Brown v. Board of Education. And in those northern portions of Delaware and the suburbs of Wilmington, you have the more liberal areas and the places that fuel the Democratic electorate. So Wilmington is caught in between those two worlds. It’s in that tension, it’s in the context of that tension, that Joe Biden gets involved in politics.

michael barbaro

And who is Joe Biden in this moment?

astead herndon

He was a lot of things. He was a son of Delaware and also someone who had legitimate relationships in black communities in Wilmington. That included longstanding friendships from his time as a lifeguard at the black swimming pool in town, but it also included relationships with civil rights activists, including the leaders who led some of the civil rights protests and marches for school desegregation.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

astead herndon

So when the city is going through this tumultuous period, Biden sees those relationships as something that makes him unique in the community and something that positions him to make change. So he decides to get involved in politics. He moves from law to run for the city council, and then later for the Senate in 1971.

archived recording (joe biden) I’m Joe Biden, and I’m a candidate for the United States Senate.

astead herndon

And in that Senate race, he leans on those relationships to craft a new brand of politician in the state.

archived recording (joe biden) Do you believe politicians when they tell you something in an election year? archived recording (speaker 1) No. archived recording (speaker 2) No. Most of the time, no. archived recording (speaker 3) No. No comment. archived recording (joe biden) That’s what we’ve come to.

astead herndon

It’s a type of politician that is emblematic of generational change and can tell Wilmington, I’m not like those white politicians of the past.

archived recording (joe biden) Politicians have done such a job on the people that the people don’t believe them anymore. And I’d like a shot at changing that.

astead herndon

I come from your community. I know your community. And I’ll legislate in your interest. That’s his pitch to voters, that in this time when there is legitimate tension between Wilmington and the rest of the state, between black communities and white communities, he’s someone who has good relationships in both. And that pitch to Delaware voters worked. Joe Biden was elected by a tiny margin, 50 to 49, and he came to the Senate to embody that new type of politician that he sold himself as. And as a new senator, he’s trying to figure out how to navigate a Washington that really runs on personal relationships at this time. Joe Biden, fresh and new, is trying to figure out what he can accomplish and also how he can serve those dual constituencies, the black and white communities, in Delaware. And one of the issues he decides to focus on is crime.

michael barbaro

And why crime? Why that issue?

astead herndon

So since those riots in the ‘60s, there had been a fear around crime in Wilmington, some founded, some unfounded. But as you move throughout the decade, particularly through the ‘70s, there is a kind of more increasing nationwide focus on the presence of drugs —

archived recording (richard nixon) America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.

astead herndon

— and an increasing violent crime rate. That is kind of a whisper in the ‘70s that grows to a full-blown chorus by the ‘80s.

archived recording It is a war. Cops against gangs. Gangs against cops. Compared to this time last year, the overall crime rate is up by 11 percent. Nearly 3,000 people killed and 15,000 wounded since 1980. Auto theft up by almost 18 percent. Whole neighborhoods of Los Angeles live in fear. Many police departments say they’re caught in the middle, between budget cutbacks, manpower shortages, and what appears to be a national crime epidemic.

astead herndon

There was a national panic around drugs and drug dealing. There was a national panic around violent crime. And this crosses racial lines.

archived recording (joseph riley) It is by far the most critical problem in the cities of America, large and small.

astead herndon

Both white and black leaders were seeing their communities upended —

archived recording (deborah prothrow-stith) I’m not talking about heart disease, sickle cell anemia, high blood pressure. I’m a physician, but I’m talking about homicide, the leading cause of death for young black men.

astead herndon

— seeing their communities really ravaged —

archived recording (joseph riley) They’re killing our people. They’re destroying our neighborhoods. They’re eroding our social fabric. They’re crippling our cities.

astead herndon

— and were looking for the federal government to intervene and do something about it. So with this issue that cuts across race, Biden sees a political opportunity for himself and for the Democratic Party. For himself, he sees a chance to really hone in on an issue that can appease both black and white communities and insulate himself for what was going to be a tough re-election in the Senate. And for the Democratic Party, he thinks he can change the reputation that Democrats have as being soft on crime. He sees focusing on this issue as an opportunity to broaden the Democrats’ national appeal and actually become the leaders on reforming the criminal justice system.

michael barbaro

So what does he actually do, now that he’s landed on this issue as his focus?

astead herndon

So Biden works his way onto the most important committee that focuses on this issue — the Senate Judiciary Committee. And for him to accomplish anything, he knows that he needs to have working relationships with Republicans, who, at this point, are in the majority and control the Senate. And the number one person who could impact Biden’s ability to pass legislation on the Senate Judiciary Committee is its chairman.

archived recording (strom thurmond) The committee will come to order.

astead herndon

Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

archived recording (strom thurmond) Unfortunately, the state of our criminal justice today favors the criminal.

astead herndon

Strom Thurmond, like many conservative Republicans at the time, has that law and order streak —

archived recording (strom thurmond) Our public safety officers are standing as a thin blue line, sheltering us from criminal anarchy.

astead herndon

— and has always thought that the way to kind of combat lawlessness was through the expansion of the prison system.

archived recording (strom thurmond) Today, the criminal has four chances in five never to be arrested. A person arrested has five chances out of six not to serve time in prison. Only about one criminal in 30 ends up behind bars.

astead herndon

But let’s remember, Thurmond’s approach isn’t that unique in this era. Because of that national panic around crime and drugs, it’s not just conservatives who have that law and order mindset like Thurmond. But Democrats are coming around to that idea, too. And Biden is one of those people. So while Biden and Thurmond had different rhetoric, came from a different civil rights background, there is an agreement about the direction the criminal justice system needs to go. He agrees with Thurmond that a more punitive approach is necessary. And so Biden and Thurmond together start working on crime legislation.

michael barbaro

So I get that for any Democrat to get anything done while they’re in the minority, they need to work with Republicans. But I’m wondering how Biden, someone who thinks of himself and talks about himself as a civil rights champion, thinks that this partnership with this particular Republican could end up being good for him, given Strom Thurmond’s well-known reputation on race.

astead herndon

Well, Biden has an incentive to grow his stature on Capitol Hill. That includes relationships with Republicans and most specifically, it requires him to have a working relationship with his partner on this important committee. But Biden is also making a lane for himself. He sees this as an opportunity for Democrats to make inroads on a very specific issue. So he’s willing to have this relationship with someone whose reputation might be controversial, because it is helpful for him. But let’s remember that Strom Thurmond gets something out of this, also. Instead of these issues being seen as completely partisan, or only being helmed by someone who has a checkered reputation on race, a sordid reputation on race, he now has a new face for the legislation. There is a civil rights lawyer from Delaware, someone with a good record in black communities, who can allow the legislation to move in a way that it probably wouldn’t have if it was just linked with the stench of Strom Thurmond’s racial history. So for both men, it’s a marriage of convenience. And this kind of partnership, it’s also just the way it worked back then. People had relationships because of votes, but also the collegiality, the old boys’ club-ness of it all. That’s just the way the Senate was.

michael barbaro

So how did they approach this legislation once they decide that they are going to work together?

astead herndon

Well, they go big. They don’t just try some incremental change to criminal justice. They propose something that is sweeping and bold. Something that would probably be the most significant overhaul of the criminal justice system in decades. In 1982, they proposed legislation that would target almost every area of the criminal justice system. It would limit access to bail and parole for those who had been arrested. It would create much tougher sentences for those who are convicted of crimes. And it would just overall expand the government’s ability to pursue the war on drugs. And the bill passes the Senate by a huge margin, 95 to 1.

michael barbaro

Wow.

astead herndon

And so with this legislation, Biden is able to bring the Democrats along with him on what has typically been seen as a conservative approach to the criminal justice issue.

michael barbaro

So the Democrats, following Joe Biden’s lead, are now fully embracing this law and order legislative agenda?

astead herndon

Yeah. And it shows the power of the relationship between Joe Biden and Strom Thurmond. So from there, the bill heads to President Reagan’s desk, who campaigned for the Oval Office on the tough-on-crime agenda.

archived recording (ronald reagan) We live in the midst of a crime epidemic that took the lives of more than 22,000 people last year. Many of you have written to me how afraid you are to walk the streets alone at night. We must make America safe again, especially for women and elderly, who face so many moments of fear.

astead herndon

So Biden and Thurman feel confident in the president’s signature. But Reagan vetoes it. He thinks that some of the measures are just too much of a federal government intrusion into the criminal justice space.

michael barbaro

So this is a big defeat.

astead herndon

Well, on one hand, it is. The president killed their big bill, their sweeping overhaul of criminal justice. But on the other hand, it is a real testament to their partnership and what they can achieve by reaching across the aisle. And it signals a real path forward for Biden. It shows that through building bridges, he can bend the Senate to his will.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So after this 1982 bill fails, but with this partnership very well established, how do Biden and Thurmond move their agenda forward?

astead herndon

So even though their big legislation fails, they know they have support in Congress for the idea.

archived recording (joe biden) We said, now let’s look at everything we can agree upon and put it on this side of the table. Let’s take everything we disagree upon and put it on this side of the table. And we added up all that we agreed upon. And we agreed upon 90 percent of the changes that had to take place. Probably 95 percent.

astead herndon

So they try to pass each of the major planks of the legislation. They just do it in separate parts.

michael barbaro

So having failed to do it all in one big package, they try to do these same reforms piecemeal?

astead herndon

Right. And they’re successful at it. They start with mandatory minimums —

archived recording (joe biden) You get caught, you go to jail.

astead herndon

— which places a baseline amount of time that someone has to spend in prison for a drug crime.

archived recording (joe biden) Where we don’t allow judges’ discretion to sentence people.

astead herndon

They also create a sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, which are the same drug. Just one is cheaper and more widely available. It meant that people who were caught using crack, the more street-level version, were treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than people who were caught using powder cocaine.

archived recording (joe biden) If you have a piece of crack cocaine, no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, you go to jail for five years. You get no probation. Judge doesn’t have a choice.

astead herndon

And then they keep going.

archived recording (joe biden) A number of other severe penalties.

astead herndon

They put something in place which is called civil asset forfeiture.

archived recording (joe biden) If you are arrested and you are a drug dealer, the government can take everything you own.

astead herndon

And what it means is that the government can take your property if they suspect that you’ve used it while committing a crime.

archived recording (joe biden) Everything from your car to your house, your bank account. They can take everything.

astead herndon

And most dramatically —

archived recording (joe biden) We’ve gone from there all the way up to saying — under the leadership of Senator Thurmond, and I’d like to suggest that I take some small credit for it myself, as well — that there is now a death penalty.

astead herndon

They reinstate the death penalty on the federal level. And the legislation specifies that it can be applied to drug trafficking.

archived recording (joe biden) If you are a major drug dealer involved in the trafficking of drugs and murder results from your activities, you go to death.

astead herndon

So through pieces of small legislation, they accomplish the overall overhaul that they initially set out to do. And Joe Biden has successfully changed the Democratic Party’s reputation on the issue of crime.

archived recording The truth is, every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the state of Delaware, Joe Biden, on that bill, and has had a majority vote of the Democratic members of the United States Senate on the bill.

astead herndon

By the ‘90s, you have a Democratic Party that has completely shifted on criminal justice.

archived recording (bill clinton) George Bush talks a good game. But he has no game plan.

astead herndon

And the biggest evidence for that shift is Bill Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 1992.

archived recording (bill clinton) He won’t streamline the federal government and change the way it works. Cut 100,000 bureaucrats and put 100,000 new police officers on the streets of American cities. But I will.

astead herndon

He is saying, I’m going to legislate kind of tough on crime.

archived recording (bill clinton) He’s talked a lot about drugs, but he hasn’t helped people on the front line to wage that war on drugs and crime, but I will.

astead herndon

And those aren’t just empty words. It is backed by a series of legislation, helmed by Biden, which give Democrats real credence to say that we are now the tough-on-crime party.

archived recording Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and the distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States.

astead herndon

And once Clinton wins —

archived recording (bill clinton) Members of the 103rd Congress, my fellow Americans —

astead herndon

— he wants to deliver on that campaign promise of tough-on-crime legislation.

archived recording (bill clinton) Violent crime and the fear it provokes are crippling our society, limiting personal freedom, and fraying the ties that bind us.

astead herndon

And so, his natural partner in this is Joe Biden, because Biden has had a decade’s worth of practice building consensus on this issue.

michael barbaro

So Clinton is tapping Biden to follow through on Clinton’s campaign promise on criminal justice. And that’s going to further the Democratic Party’s agenda to be this party that is tough on crime.

astead herndon

Exactly. And what’s important about this time is that Democrats are now in the majority. So unlike the ‘80s, when there was Strom Thurmond leading the Judiciary Committee, it is now Biden at the helm. And that gives him a unique space of power in which to operate. He is able to implement those lessons of consensus-building between Democrats and Republicans and apply them as the head of the Judiciary Committee. And so with that power and with those skills, he is now able to craft the most significant legislation of his Senate career, the 1994 crime bill.

archived recording (george mitchell) A lot of people deserve credit for the passage of this bill.

astead herndon

And it passes.

archived recording (george mitchell) But I think no one will disagree when I say that the one person most responsible for the passage of this bill is Senator Biden.

astead herndon

With big bipartisan support.

archived recording (george mitchell) Joe Biden is both the most underrated legislator in the Senate and the most effective legislator in the Senate. archived recording (joe biden) That’s great, George, thank you. I hope my mom was listening.

astead herndon

It provides billions in funding to increase the amount of police officers on the street, to build new prisons in states, and it incentivizes states to create harsher sentences on drug crimes. But it does include some measures that are more progressive, that try to stop people from committing crimes in the first place. It includes money for alternative measures that aren’t prison.

archived recording (joe biden) The thing that has meant more to me than anything I have done in 22 years in the United States Senate —

astead herndon

It also includes the Violence Against Women Act —

archived recording (joe biden) I can’t tell you how much it truly will make a difference in the lives of women who are being abused and battered in this country.

astead herndon

— which focuses on preventing domestic violence. And it includes an assault weapons ban, a rare rebuke to the National Rifle Association.

archived recording (joe biden) Because no Republican president, no president that I have served with in the 22 years I’ve been here, was willing to go out on the line and say, we’re not going to have a bill unless there is the gun ban in the bill for assault weapons.

astead herndon

But let’s be clear. While there are some progressive measures, this is a continuation of that tough-on-crime approach we saw from Biden in the ‘80s.

archived recording (joe biden) There’s a lot of reasons, I think, for the American people to breathe a little sigh of relief today.

michael barbaro

So what does this moment represent for Biden?

astead herndon

This 1994 bill is the political culmination of what Biden set out to do in Washington. It’s now that Biden has solidified himself as the bridge-builder between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, particularly on criminal justice. And Biden’s no longer reliant on a Republican like Strom Thurmond to get this legislation done. In fact, Strom Thurmond votes against the 1994 crime bill, citing some of those progressive measures. But Biden is able to get it passed anyway, because he’s moved the Democratic Party along with him, and because he has his own relationships with Republicans to be able to win over some of those votes. It’s a full-circle political moment from where Biden started in the ‘70s. He is no longer learning from some of the Senate wheelers and dealers of the past. This is now Biden’s political brand.

michael barbaro

So this is a major accomplishment. And it’s clear evidence that Biden can bridge the parties in Washington. But you also told us that Biden’s focus on criminal justice was also about this desire to serve both the black and white communities in Delaware. So did that work?

astead herndon

Depends on how you slice it. Politically, it worked well. He keeps getting re-elected. And he does so with significant support in both black and white communities in Delaware. Tons of people love him. But that is not universal. There were definitely people, as early as the ‘80s, who were saying that this criminal justice overhaul that was led by Biden would have particularly devastating effects in black communities.

archived recording (jesse jackson) Reviving the death penalty, spending several billion dollars on prisons and longer sentences is not the answer to reducing crime. It’s settling disproportionately on the poor, on the black. We must break the cycle.

astead herndon

And now, we have a lot of evidence that those people have been proven correct.

archived recording The U.S. has the world’s largest prison population, more than two million people behind bars.

astead herndon

You can’t overstate what the war on drugs did to black communities.

archived recording We’ve got a mass incarceration epidemic in this country. More than 2.2 million disproportionately black, Latino, non-violent drug offenders.

astead herndon

There are 10 times more people in jail for drug offenses by 2017 than there were in 1980.

archived recording (dan lungren) Certainly one of the sad ironies in this entire episode is that a bill which was characterized by some as a response to the crack epidemic in African-American communities has led to racial sentencing disparities which simply cannot be ignored in any reasoned discussion of this issue.

astead herndon

The longer sentences for crack disproportionately hurt people of color, specifically black people. And the white drug users, who were often arrested using cocaine, got away with shorter prison sentences for what was essentially the same drug.

archived recording We can’t talk about this without talking about race and poverty. We know, for example, that white people in this country are 10 times more likely to use drugs than African-Americans. And yet disproportionately, African-Americans are in jail about that. The whole “stop-and-frisk” in New York City —

astead herndon

The amount of police on the streets meant constant surveillance of communities and report after report of police brutality.

archived recording It’s the kind of scene that could play out on any given day, in any city in America. Men in blue stopping young men of color as tensions rise.

astead herndon

And what that has is a real human effect on these communities. These aren’t just numbers. These are lives.

archived recording Two days after a New York City grand jury cleared a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man, the protests are growing larger and spreading across the country, including Boston and Chicago. And now, another New York grand jury, this one in Brooklyn, is about to investigate the shooting of another unarmed black man.

astead herndon

So families are disrupted. Community leaders are gone. And the whole structure of government’s relationship, particularly in black communities, is forever upended.

archived recording (crowd) I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. archived recording (speaker) You may be charged with additional crimes. archived recording (crowd) Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter.

astead herndon

So the impact of this legislation has been devastating, particularly for communities of color. It’s been so bad, in fact, that both Democrats and Republicans have largely moved away from many of these positions and agree that the measures were overly punitive. Joe Biden himself has changed positions on a number of these issues and is now arguing the exact opposite of the legislation that he passed in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. He is against the death penalty. He is against mandatory minimums. He wants to eliminate the disparity between crack and cocaine in sentencing. But here’s the thing. While he disavows the policies that were put in place as a result of this legislation, he does not disavow the politics that helped produced these policies. Biden sees the bipartisanship across our relationships, the bridge-building that produced the legislation in the ‘80s and ‘90s, as foundational to his vision of politics. And it’s a view of Washington that says what’s most valuable is bringing people together.

archived recording (joe biden) The place in which I work is a majestic place. If you’re there long enough, it has an impact on you.

astead herndon

And it’s that belief that leads him to eulogize Strom Thurmond in 2003.

archived recording (joe biden) This is a man who was opposed to the poll tax. This is a man who I watched vote for the extension of the Voting Rights Act. This is a man who I watched vote for the Martin Luther King holiday.

astead herndon

And when I listen to this eulogy, it strikes me that Biden’s political vision is also a personal one.

archived recording (joe biden) It’s really easy to say today that that was pure political expediency. But I choose to believe otherwise. I choose to believe that Strom Thurmond was doing what few do once they pass the age of 50. He was continuing to grow, continuing to change.

astead herndon

Different from most politicians, it’s not just that he thinks bipartisanship is important because it can make things happen in the legislative context. He sees reaching across parties and reaching across communities as a necessary thing to actually personally transform people.

archived recording (joe biden) You cannot, if you respect those with whom you serve, fail to understand how deeply they feel about things differently than you. And over time, I believe it has an effect on you.

astead herndon

He has chosen to believe that if you do the hard work of reaching across the aisle, you won’t just get a policy to happen, but you can make someone better. You can transform the soul of an individual, but also of Washington, and in turn, the country.

archived recording (joe biden) If we stand together, we will win the battle for the soul of this nation.

astead herndon

That’s why you hear him talking so much about civility in this campaign.

archived recording (joe biden) There is not a single thing beyond our capacity if we stand together and get up and remember who we are. This is the United States of America. Period.

astead herndon

His slogan is, “Restoring the soul of America.”

archived recording (joe biden) We are in a battle for the soul of this nation. That’s why, primarily, I’m running for president.

astead herndon

He is evoking an era in which consensus-building and cross-aisle relationships were the order of the day. And the promise of his candidacy is to bring that time back. But that is coming into conflict with a growing wing of the party that is more concerned around ideals than process. It is their argument that for too long, Democrats have been concerned with reaching across the aisle to build Republican support, and should be thinking about how to overcome them to produce the big solutions that they desire.

michael barbaro

Right. The left wing of the Democratic Party, which is very skeptical of Joe Biden, says you cannot separate this instinct of his, this kind of bipartisan politics and dealmaking, however noble it is in intention, from the policies that those politics have produced, and from their real-world impact, which, in the case of criminal justice reforms, were devastating. And Biden seems to be saying, actually, you can separate them and you should separate them. Don’t fixate on one bill or one legislative partner that I had in the Senate. Focus on the tactics and the tone. And imagine a world where those are used for whatever it is you want to get done, because that’s what it actually takes to get big things done in Washington.

astead herndon

Right. But here’s why the left disagrees. The left’s evidence for their criticism is not in the 1970s or ‘80s or ‘90s, the time in which Biden was in the Senate. They point to the last Democratic president. They say that Barack Obama tried to use the same type of strategies to reach out to Republicans to try to build consensus. And in this era of polarization, of partisanship, of divisiveness, that it didn’t work. This is the central question that the Biden candidacy is asking of Democrats — can the bridge-building still apply in this era? Or, with the tone that has been set in Washington, is it more important for Democrats to orient themselves around ideals and around making big things happen, no matter if Republicans are included in that solution or not? Biden chooses to believe something different. That even in this era, even with this tone, that restoring the collegiality and consensus-building of Washington should still be the priority of any president. He believes that if you create a Washington that is more civil, then that could be more transformative than any particular policy could ever be.

michael barbaro

Astead, thank you very much.

astead herndon

Thank you.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording (james clyburn) And until we can get some assurances from the majority leader that he is going to allow for a fair and impartial trial to take place, we would be crazy to walk in there, knowing he’s set up a kangaroo court.

michael barbaro

On Thursday, just hours after impeaching President Trump, House Democratic leaders raised the possibility of withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate indefinitely, in order to negotiate better terms for a trial or avoid a trial altogether.

archived recording (john berman) How long are you willing to wait? archived recording (james clyburn) As long as it takes.

michael barbaro

But Democratic leaders, including Majority Whip James Clyburn on CNN, predicted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would hold a rushed and biased trial that would quickly exonerate Trump without seeking or introducing any new evidence. By not transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Democrats can stall a trial for weeks or even months until they get the kind of trial that they want.

archived recording (lindsey graham) What they’re proposing, to not send the articles for disposition to the Senate after being passed in the House, is incredibly dangerous.

michael barbaro

Senate Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, called the tactic a form of legislative extortion.

archived recording (lindsey graham) Just think for a moment. You pass articles of impeachment in the House, you refuse to send them into the Senate until the Senate constructs a trial of your liking as speaker of the House. We have separation of powers for a reason. You can’t be speaker of the House and majority leader of the Senate at the same time.

michael barbaro