Last week was a complete and utter disaster for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, one whose scope will soon come to view with the release of public polling. It wasn’t just his defense of his opposition to school busing for school desegregation using, well, segregationist “states’ rights” language (if it was up to him, Kamala Harris would get to be bused to white schools in Berkeley, but a black person in Alabama, or Delaware, would not). That was horrendous enough, particularly since that “states’ rights” shit continues to be an impediment to justice and equality on pretty much every issue we care about today.
What was just as bad was Biden’s utter lack of empathy and give-a-fuck for the pain that Harris had so clearly articulated, saying it was “ personal and it was actually very hurtful” to hear Biden brag about working with … there it is again, segregationist lawmakers. Did Biden show even the slightest shred of introspection or empathy? None. After our experience of the last two Democratic presidents—Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—who easily expressed empathy, it was actually jarring to listen to Biden. This is a man who didn’t just stubbornly cling to wrong ideas, such as supporting the Hyde Amendment and “states’ rights” opposition to school busing—but also didn’t give a damn how it made you feel.
“When he hears Harris challenge him it is not an opportunity to move forward with humility, he hears an attack on his very being and he comes from a generation hardwired to defend themselves,” wrote a perceptive person, Gayle Leslie, online. “And whether he understands it about himself or not, the old white guy does not want to give any ground to the black woman who’s telling him he did something wrong. Especially since he’d always thought he was doing her a favor. And that is the problem: he thinks he was not so much a champion of her civil rights as he was a benevolent benefactor.”
You see this in action at every event, where he jokes about being gropey and touchey with women without proper consent. Many women have said it makes them uncomfortable. He doesn’t care. He thinks it’s a joke.
That lack of empathy and stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the world has changed—and he with it!—are making it so that people refuse to give him the benefit of the doubt. At a rich-people fundraiser (the only kind he seems to do) in Seattle on Sunday, his own supporters catcalled him when he claimed that mocking a gay waiter five years ago would have been acceptable. A big deal on its own? Of course not. Gay people were certainly discriminated against five years ago in many places, and many are today. But Biden’s shtick is wearing so thin, people have lost patience for pretty much anything he says.
Morning Consult has the first post-debate poll out the gate, and it shows Biden dropping a whopping five points. Harris gained six. Given that the bulk of Biden’s support is black Americans (he has no other natural constituency in the party), odds are that erosion is coming from black Democrats. And without black support, Biden is nothing.
Biden’s campaign is truly inexplicable. He could’ve ridden off into the sunset as a beloved elder statesman, trusted lieutenant to a transformational, historic president. Instead, he learned nothing from his first two failed runs (he’s not that good at this stuff!); refused to take the pulse of the party’s zeitgeist, one in which women and people of color are ascendant; and is now running a campaign seemingly focused on poking those groups in the eye.
It’s sad and tragic, but it’s time for Joe to go.