The founding editor of Politico criticized Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden in a Thursday op-ed.
Of Biden’s recent campaign gaffes, John F. Harris wrote, “Joe Biden is facing an urgent question: What exactly is the rationale for his presidential candidacy?”
Citing Biden’s refusal to apologize for recent comments, in which he cited his work with segregationist senators as an example of the Senate’s bygone “civility,” Harris wrote, “The hope is that voters will embrace Biden as a kind of American Churchill. The past 24 hours raise, not for the first time, a more painful possibility: Grampa Simpson is running for president.”
The primary issue with Biden’s presidential bid, according to Harris, is that he seems to be out of touch with modern Democrats. Their concern, he writes, “is that Biden sees contemporary America through a distorting haze of nostalgia, that his values and assumptions were shaped by the last generation or even the one before that, that after many years in public life he still lacks the self-awareness or self-discipline to wonder whether modern voters will find his vagrant ruminations about the past as interesting or relevant as he does.”
Referring to Biden’s tendency to change his mind on policies, Harris wrote, “Biden, during 48 years on the national scene, has never had an especially strong ideological profile: He’s been a reasonably centrist Democrat for all of them.” Biden, who was recently persuaded to withdraw his support of the Hyde Amendment by liberal activists, held anti-abortion positions as recently as 2006.
Harris noted Biden’s past tendency toward saying controversial things: “The evidence of the past couple days — redundant to evidence amassed over several decades — is that if voters are going to embrace Biden’s character they must also embrace or overlook his penchant for the cringe-worthy remark. And realize that often the most cringey remarks will flirt with racial themes.” Later in the article, Harris recalled a comment made by Biden ahead of his nomination to the vice presidency, saying, “It was in January 2007 in which Biden offered what he meant as a compliment to Barack Obama by saying: ‘I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.'”
A particularly critical moment of the article in reference to Biden’s comment was tweeted later by Harris, “Biden’s remarks were like a family dinner in which some aging relative who would never think of themselves as racist holds forth after too much sherry. ‘You know, Aunt Beulah, I understand your point but some of those terms you use really aren’t acceptable in contemporary usage.'”
Biden’s remarks were like a family dinner in which some aging relative who would never think of themselves as racist holds forth after too much sherry.“You know, Aunt Beulah, I understand your point but some of those terms you use really aren’t acceptable in contemporary usage.”
— John F. Harris (@harrispolitico) June 20, 2019
