A former vice president has offered a rare public confession.
“I read in the New York Times today that one of my problems is, if I ever were to run for president, I like Republicans,” Joe Biden told a Wednesday gathering of the United States Conference of Mayors. Then, he paused briefly before making the sign of the cross, saying, “Well, bless me father, for I have sinned.”
Gathered in Washington, D.C., from around the country, the dearly beloved loved it. It was classic Biden.
And it was those kind of folksy quips that endeared the vice president to a large part of the country and could charm voters again should Biden decide to run for president in 2020. A skilled retail politician and a practicing Catholic, Biden has been perfecting this blue-collar-uncle-at-the-end-of-the-bar persona since Delaware first sent him to the Senate during the Nixon administration.
The Biden confession comes during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when bipartisanship seems like a forgotten virtue. The basis was a New York Times report insinuating that Biden helped a Republican, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, keep his seat.
Three weeks before the election, Biden traveled to Upton’s district. He delivered a speech before the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan. He collected a $200,000 speaking fee. He praised the Republican for helping to pass medical research legislation, called him a champion in the fight against cancer, and said Upton was “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with.”
Biden wasn’t offering an endorsement, a spokesman told the New York Times. Biden was expressing sincere admiration for Upton’s work after the vice president’s own son, Beau, died from cancer.
This would prove something of an unforgivable sin, especially after Upton triumphed over his Democratic challenger later that November. The Times reports that it raised questions about his party leadership and whether Biden would make an acceptable 2020 champion.
But for Republicans, Biden wasn’t exactly a political savior.
The Upton race was close, but not that close. The Republican defeated the Democrat by more than 13,000 votes, or four-and-a-half percentage points. FiveThirtyEight ranked the district as R+7.7, and voters there had voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016. A few words from Biden might have helped Upton down the stretch. It’s unlikely it determined the race.
Biden isn’t likely to be revered by any Republicans as a saint, either. His current bipartisan tone sounds very different from his old rhetoric. It wasn’t that long ago that Biden warned a predominantly African-American crowd that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would “put you all back in chains.” As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee before that, Biden oversaw what then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas described as “a high-tech lynching.”
Republicans will remember those episodes and temper with context any gratitude they have for Biden’s help in Michigan. GOP voters will see his confession as a nice bipartisan overture. They just aren’t likely to take it seriously.
