Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential front-runner, has embraced two key policies championed by liberal rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The two-term vice president announced Sunday he now supported Sanders’s proposal to make public colleges and universities free for students from families whose combined income is below $125,000. He also adopted Warren’s bankruptcy plan.
“Across the country, middle and working class families are being squeezed by debt,” Biden tweeted. “This primary has brought out our party’s best ideas, and our nation is better for it. If I’m President, I’ll continue to bring the best ideas from all corners of the country and fight to make them reality.”
Across the country, middle and working class families are being squeezed by debt. This is a massive problem, and one that we need all of the best ideas to solve. That’s why today, I’m adopting two plans from @BernieSanders and @ewarren to achieve this.
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 15, 2020
Biden’s shift to the Left comes as he inches closer to becoming the presumptive nominee. Sanders is his only remaining opponent in the Democratic White House race, but the Vermont senator’s delegate path is becoming mathematically narrower. Polls suggest Biden will thump him on Tuesday when Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio voters cast ballots in the primary.
The 36-year Delaware senator lags in popularity with key members of both Sanders’s and Warren’s respective bases: young people and Democrats who consider themselves more liberal.
In October, he unveiled his education platform based on policies pushed by President Barack Obama. It included two years of free community college or other forms of similar training, as well as measures to alleviate student debt and loans.
But Sanders charged shortly after Biden revealed his veer to the Left that his competitor hadn’t gone far enough.
“It’s great that Joe Biden is now supporting a position that was in the Democratic platform four years ago. Now we have to go much further,” he said in a statement.
Sanders added: “We need to make all public universities, colleges, and trade schools tuition-free for everyone like our high schools are. We need to cancel all student debt. And we can fund it with a small tax on Wall Street speculation.”
Biden’s embrace of Warren’s bankruptcy plan is more unexpected since it largely undoes the bill the pair famously clashed over in 2005, when he represented a state in which the credit card industry is based. The Massachusetts senator’s framework would make it easier for bankrupted individuals and families to seek relief, protecting homes and cars from seizure.
“In 2005, Biden worked hard to add progressive reforms to a bankruptcy bill that was going to be passed with or without him. Today, he agrees firmly with Senator Warren that we need to fundamentally reshape our bankruptcy system,” his campaign said in a statement Sunday.
