Well, here’s how I see that.
Either he’s too clueless to understand what his staff is up to and is therefore certainly not up to running a country, or he’s fully aware of what they’re doing and wants to appear to keep his hands clean – in which case, he’s a bastard who doesn’t deserve the presidency.
One way or the other… is this the guy you want in the job? Not me.
Actually, the latter quality is exactly the kind of political ruthlessness that I think is probably necessary to win presidential elections today. One must be fluent in dirty politics, but skillful enough to stay above the fray and keep one’s hands clean with plausibly deniability. Hopefully the eventual nominee has this skillset.
Actually, I think it’s going to backfire on Bernie, as it has on every other Democratic primary candidate who has tried to inartfully dirty up their opponents. Bernie has been no more skillful than Kamala Harris was when she tried it against Biden. You’ll recall how that worked out for her.
Where are you seeing this stuff? I follow Bernie on FB and it’s all positive stuff, rarely even mentioning his opponents.
Well, hopefully that shameful lie Warren told about Sanders last week will drop her out of the race pronto, then.
I don’t do Twitter, but I just went and checked Bernie’s feed there, and no personal attacks on rivals there, either. Most of it focuses on his own policies and campaign. A few tweets contrast his policies with Biden’s, but nothing attacking Biden personally.
It’s on the Twitter feed of those people I’ve mentioned and get retweeted a lot so that’s how I saw it. I don’t use Facebook. The newsletter was a screenshot by a media reporter who presumably subscribed to an email list.
Anyway Sanders has just disavowed the newsletter.
Not Bernie himself. Some of the people who work on his campaign who themselves have a relatively big following on Twitter.
Checked Sirota’s feed. Definitely a saltier tone, but no personal attacks. Lots of stuff about Biden’s long record of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare. Many links to multiple videos and articles documenting same.
Sounds as though the Biden campaign is trying to avoid debating the issues and would rather talk about whether one particular video clip was taken out of context.
Also, I’ll note that he has about 1.5% as many followers as Bernie does. With all due respect, I’m not too concerned about how Bernie’s doing with the “people who follow campaign consultants on Twitter” demographic.
Actually, looks like Biden is going further and saying that the video was “doctored” (again, not sure which of the multiple videos, taken over several decades, showing him calling for SS/Medicare cuts he was talking about). As far as I can see, he offers no evidence for this claim. So who’s practicing dirty politics again?
This is what he was referring to.
Did Biden laud a Paul Ryan proposal to cut Social Security as Bernie Sanders’ campaign said?
It was doctored. (Reuters) I posted this link in Post #3130. Please read the story to the end, where PolitiFact rates what was asserted in Sanders’s newsletter as false.
How do you know the other videos, taken over several decades, weren’t also doctored in the same ways?
Again, I have no problem with Sanders calling Biden out on his actual record. That’s fine. But there is no need to resort to Trumpian tactics like doctoring a video to completely twist the context of Biden’s words, as Sanders’s staff did. That is dirty politics. Biden wouldn’t do it to Sanders, that’s sure.
Re the Warren thing, some actual cites demonstrated her “guilt” would be nice. If you have them, I mean.
ETA: Ninja’d by Boycott, I’m happy to concede.
ETA again: Thing Fish, you might want to review septimus’s excellent Post #3162 to better understand the nuances of Biden’s positions on SSI and Medicare.
The clip was not doctored or faked in any way, and the article you linked to doesn’t claim that it was. It may have been taken out of context, but Biden is lying when he says it was “doctored”. So basically, you’re parroting Biden’s lies and then using them to pre-emptively reject any other evidence that would look bad for Biden. Nice. Apparently one can’t link videos from Twitter, but you can check Sirota’s feed, watch multiple clips of Biden on the Senate floor bragging about his efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare, and then tell yourself that C-Span is part of the big meanie Bernie conspiracy.
Biden’s surrogates are pushing that 'But Politico said it was false!" line. But all Politico said was false was the specific assertion that Biden was praising Ryan in that one particular video. It didn’t deny that Biden has a record of working with Republicans for the last 40 years in efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. And even then, their only source for their assertion that Biden was being sarcastic is…the Biden campaign! Pretty crappy journalism.
Ooh, here’s a linkable video from a Meet the Press interview in 2007.
Here is the Motley Fool describing Biden’s decades of efforts to cut these vital social programs. Of course, he thinks that’s a good thing.
Here’s a quote from another brainwashed Bernie bro unfairly attacking Biden:
Here’san article summarizing Biden’s record on the issue, sourced mainly from the work of that well-known partisan hack Bob Woodward. But hey, maybe Woodward’s book was “doctored”!
Here’sa NYT analysis of the brouhaha, pointing out that Biden has misrepresented the Politifact finding. Money quote:
Checked this because of Aspenglow’s recommendation. So, according to this generous interpretation, he** did **support cutting Social Security, but he has excuses. Cool. Bernie Sanders has never supported any cuts to Social Security, so need not make excuses.
And WRT the last paragraph…so millions of Americans irrationally hated Barack Obama, and the way to restore national unity is to elect Barack Obama’s Vice-President, because those Americans will respect him? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
No. At no time has Biden ever suggested a cut to SocSec.
If you are freezing the entire federal budget, no that’s not a *cut. *If my boss comes to me and says “Doc, no one, including CEO and myself, is getting a raise this year.” I wouldn’t consider that a pay cut.
A freeze is not a cut, especially when everything is frozen.
The portion that gave the quote context was cut out, making it look like Biden supported (or “lauded,” in the words of the newsletter) Paul Ryan’s views on SSI. That’s “doctored” in my book. You make it sound like people just spontaneously took the video out of context. They didn’t. They were led to believe something that is false through manipulations of the video by Sanders’s team.
Having lived through those years when Republicans were pushing hard to balance the budget and each side considered it honorable to work with each other, I remember Biden’s arguments. In context of the times. Context matters. Republicans used to pretend that huge budget deficits were a problem. They’re not wrong. Currently, they have zero interest in fixing it. Biden’s positions on SSI and Medicare have evolved with the times, and I understand that.
Did you watch the entire unedited video in question? I think you should. It speaks for itself.
Do you agree that something must be done to fix SSI/Medicare so it can be preserved for people over the long term? If yes, then how dare Joe Biden be willing to actually consider solutions to the problem? I certainly never heard him say he was cutting either program in that clip. I heard him say he would consider raising the eligibility age, and I heard him say Medicare is the far greater concern but he offered no particular solution, saying only that he would consider any proposal. Oooohhh. Is he wrong?
I see nothing that supports your assertion that the Motley Fool article describes Biden’s “decades of efforts to cut these vital social programs.” I saw an article with a headline that makes an assertion for which they offer exactly zero supporting proof. I guess you liked the headline.
I have highlighted the relevant word in Warren’s quote.
Do you remember the context of 2010? First, Biden was pursuing compromise with Republicans on behalf of Barack Obama and in accordance with Obama’s agenda to find a way forward to a “grand bargain” with Republicans, after they swept the 2010 mid-terms. It was Biden’s job to carry out the Obama Administration’s wishes.
Second, we were still in a hell of a financial mess created by Republicans during the Bush the Lesser years. Obama/Biden were tasked with finding a way out of that gawd awful wilderness. Remember? It seems you did, since you left out all that context mentioned by Woodward in relating to Biden’s position at that moment in time.
Wow, you really got me there. Biden has at times supported proposals that might… <gasp> fix a problem! Funny; the only solutions I ever hear offered by Sanders is, “tax the rich!” No disagreement from me, but I doubt it’s going to get him elected if he wins the primary.
Just to be clear, I’m on SSI. This issue matters to me a great deal. It’s not something abstract that is happening at some distant point in the future for which I can make adjustments. For me, this issue is here and now. I pay very close attention to what is happening to SSI and Medicare. Again, I have no problem with Sanders or Warren offering valid criticisms based on Biden’s actual record. But when Sanders’s people twist the context, that’s reprehensible in my book.
And if Sanders’s gambit was so innocent, why did he apologize?
Your reading comprehension skills leave a lot to be desired. Here are the relevant excerpts from the Motley Fool article:
For those of you who may not recall, this isn’t Joe Biden’s first go-around as a presidential hopeful for the Democratic ticket. Prior to Barack Obama winning the Democratic nomination in 2008, Biden was one of Obama’s competitors for that nomination. Of the many proposals Biden brought to the table in 2007, arguably none was viewed with greater scrutiny than his ideas on buoying retirement savings plans, including Social Security.
As detailed by Bob Woodward, an investigative journalist who’s worked for the Washington Post for the past 48 years, in his 2012 book The Price of Politics, then-President Obama leaned on Vice President Biden to be his key negotiator at the congressional level between Democrats and Republicans regarding Social Security and other revenue-generating and expenditure-cutting initiatives. The final tax deal that reached Obama’s desk in 2010 extended the George W. Bush-era tax cuts and, most notably, created a payroll-tax holiday that cut payroll tax collection by $112 billion.
In 2017, payroll taxes accounted for more than 88% of the just over $1 trillion collected by the Social Security program. By providing a partial payroll-tax holiday, lawmakers hindered the revenue collection potential of the Social Security program’s workhorse.
It’s also worth noting that when Biden helped to orchestrate this tax deal, it was well known that Social Security was in deep trouble. In 2010, the Trustees had been forecasting an eventual depletion of Social Security’s asset reserves by 2037, and the report has been alluding to a long-term cash shortfall since 1985. Thus, even with Social Security short on long-term revenue, Biden led the creation of a tax plan that further reduced the program’s income for a short amount of time.
While not focusing strictly on cutting benefits, Biden’s noted approach, according to NBC News, was to work on a bipartisan solution that would include discussing options such as raising the full retirement age and increasing the earnings cap associated with the payroll tax.
Lastly, as recently as May 2018, Biden has argued for the idea of means-testing for both Social Security and Medicare benefits, which is actually something that President Trump casually suggested while on the campaign trail for the presidency.
Answered none of my questions, I see, regarding the need to address long-term viability of SSI/Medicare, or why Sanders felt the need to apologize.
Your post also ignores (again) the context of 2007/2008 financial crisis left behind by Republicans for Obama/Biden to deal with. What do you think that payroll tax holiday was all about?
I see an ideological argument prepared to support Sanders no matter what. Nothing more. That’s sad. If the situation was reversed, I’d be as willing to call out Biden for ugly tactics.
For the record, I’ll vote for Sanders if he wins the nomination. But I’ll sure hate it, after this caper.
Fortunately, I don’t think I’ll have to.
And nice job there, dishonestly trying to twist Warren’s quote. Massive hypocrisy, anyone? Clearly, she used the past tense because Biden is no longer a Senator, not because they no longer hold differing views.
Bernie Sanders, throughout his entire career, has steadfastly fought against all efforts to cut Social Security, whether it be by eliminating COLA, means-testing, raising the retirement age, or any such shenanigans. He has rejected Republican efforts to claim that adequately caring for our elderly is “too expensive”. Joe Biden has consistently been willing, in the name of “bipartisanship”, to treat the welfare of elderly and disabled people as a bargaining chip. If you want to argue that cutting benefits to poor people in order to prevent rich people from having to pay their fair share of taxes is a good thing, go for it. If you want to argue that Joe Biden’s record isn’t what it in fact is, good luck with that. If you just want to keep clutching your pearls about one misleading video instead, you’re just revealing that you know you can’t win either of those arguments on their merits.
Missed edit window; the last paragraph of point #2 of the Motley Fool article (beginning “While not focusing…”) should be at the end of point 1.