Yep. Twitter is loaded with Bernie bros, GOP paid posters, and Kremlin agents, all of whom will savagely attack whoever is the dem front runner.
True dat.
I would agree that twitter trends are not necessarily indicative of how real voters are going to perceive Biden’s gaffes. However, there’s a cautionary tale for Biden in that what he says in context and how people working in digital media interpret and report what he says are two different things. I mean, this has always been the case to some extent, but what I find these days is that with our currently fragmented media and the fact that the standards of what’s required to be a reporter spreading information about a campaign are in many cases lower than what they were a few decades ago, the political terrain can be less forgiving. There’s a lot of copycat reporting going on. The major networks and other outlets all broke the story in ways that made it seem like he was praising a segregationist.
In this specific case, I don’t think Biden actually committed a gaffe in the sense that if people actually consider the context in which his comments were made, Biden’s language is not in any way shape or form racist or even suggesting that he’s an apologist for racism. All he said was that sometimes, whether you like it or not, in politics, you have to realize that you work with people who have character flaws. That’s 100X more true when you’re president and not senator. Obama had to work for 6 years with a party that called him everything from the food stamp president to a communist fascist dictator. That didn’t keep him from working with people and signing important legislation. It’s something I hope the activist wing of the party starts to understand.
I suspect this might all help him in the general with anti-PC swing voters.
I’ve seen the question asked in a number of places, but not yet answered: besides some anti-busing legislation, what did Biden accomplish by working with segregationist Senators?
Why not just answer your own question? I don’t know - appropriations bills and funding the government maybe? Honestly that’s a stupid question to ask.
I think it’s a legit question.
I’d say just agreeing to sign an appropriations bill together would be a start, considering how apparently difficult it is just to keep the government funded in today’s partisan climate. A lot of people who supported social programs like FDR’s New Deal and Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare were probably racist too. Should FDR have insisted that only people who support integration vote for the New Deal? Should he have vetoed his own legislation for having the support of Dixie Democrats? Should LBJ have insisted that only people who support integration vote for Medicare?
What Biden was getting at is that people should ideally support the idea of their representative, their senator, their governor, and their president occasionally working with the other side to achieve political progress. That message is something that will resonate with independents, who desperately want more progress on healthcare and don’t want partisan politics to screw it up. The irresponsible media and the hard left seized on the comments about him working with a segregationist and completely whiffed on the deeper message, which is an important message.
If this was Bernie Sanders this footage would be viral all over Social Media. It’s Biden though so after two months it has fewer than 500 views.
It took me 5 minutes to find this video on youtube so why have paid researchers who can find letters from the 1970s not shared this. Vetting involves sharing the good and the bad. And this from Biden was damn excellent.
He sponsored or cosponsored over 4500 resolutions many of which passed requiring some bipartisanship. https://www.congress.gov/member/joseph-biden/B000444?page=45
Start at the oldest. It’s a big list. I’m not going through it all. Many many small and some not so small. The Brady Bill got through on his back. The Violence Against Women Act. Some that were not great choices in hindsight too.
And of course there are all the other bills that talking to each other got things done. Some mundane true but a functional Congress. A big contrast to today.
How many, once we drop all the renaming of post offices and stuff?
No seriously, I’m asking for “here’s the accomplishments that made it worthwhile to work with segregationists.”
We still had segregationist Senators in the 1990s? 
Look, this is Biden’s example of how one can work with ‘the other side’ to accomplish stuff.
Biden’s defenders can come up with examples, or admit that he could be full of shit.
What’s stupid about it? It’s easy to work with people to pass the sort of legislation they already are predisposed to pass. Like the anti-busing legislation (the one example we have) - no problem getting a segregationist Senator to sign on to that! And boy howdy, America is so much better for having been able to largely maintain a large degree of de facto school segregation for all these decades, amirite?
Yes.
Remember Byrd, for example, served until his death in 2010. Once upon a time Byrd had filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He became someone who by 2003 was rated 100% approval by the NAACP. How does one change? Conversations with people you respect, by way of working together are part of that.
Eastland, who Biden mentioned being able to work with, could block almost anything in Judiciary if he wanted to. Anything that got past it meant you worked with him. Talmadge, another one mentioned, as “one of the meanest guys I ever knew”, was on the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, sponsored a bill that got food stamps to the rural poor, and he was an effective part of the Senate’s Watergate investigation.
How much of what got done every day was facilitated by having civil relationships with people who were despicable overall? It is really hard to quantify. In general though many of believe that it is exactly the people we most disagree with that we need to speak with the most and be most civil to if any progress is to be made. Don’t let disgust with them as people get in the way of getting the other day in day out work done. Talking civilly may not work all that often. Not talking at all other than to vilify never does.
That’s all well and good. But that defense of Biden becomes a little problematic when his signature example of work with these segregationists was a bill to stop school integration.
Also problematic: congress hasn’t worked that way since at least 2009.
Especially pathetic (and discouraging) is that his persona on The Apprentice — the insightful executive who fires just the right person — was a complete fake: the series producers chose who would be fired and wrote scripts for the buffoon.
Get that? :eek: The buffoons elected the buffoon for his “demonstrated management skill,” but that “skill” was just a scripted TV show. :smack:
Let’s see if Biden can survive #metoo. It’s coming sooner or later.
Pretty sure it already arrived - he was heavily criticized for several instances of non sexual but boundary crossing touching.
Fake news from the kremlin and bernie Bros.
Sadly, I’m not surprised that you’re willing to call a bunch of women you’ve never meant liars or trolls just because they told a story you didn’t like.