CHARLESTON, South Carolina — After Joe Biden’s apology for fond reminiscences of work with segregationist senators, uttered at a June 18 Manhattan fundraiser, the Bernie Sanders campaign is taking aim at another line by the former vice president that same night.
“We may not want to demonize anybody who has made money,” Biden said that evening, per a pool report. “Nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change. Because when we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution.”
In a Democratic primary season where “change” is the watchword for more than 20 Democrats seeking to challenge President Trump, Sanders’ presidential campaign has already weaponized Biden’s words.
“We learned that he said that ‘nothing will fundamentally change’ for you. That’s what he told some of his high-end donors in a closed-door room,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir pointed out to reporters last week.
Added Nina Turner, Sanders campaign national co-chairwoman and a former Democratic Ohio state senator, “If nothing fundamentally changes for billionaires and millionaires of this country, then nothing fundamentally changes for the everyday people of this country.”
Democratic strategist Jeff Hewitt told the Washington Examiner that attacks over Biden’s remark probably won’t get much traction “unless they’re putting it on TV or lighting him up a the debate stage like Kamala Harris,” the California senator. Biden was “a deer in headlights” during the first debates, Hewitt said. “There’s a reason he’s run twice before for president and hasn’t won.”
Still, on the campaign trail, Biden is trying a version of the “change” message, though he served in the Senate for 36 years before eight as vice president.
The former vice president on Sunday emphasized change and repeated the word while answering a question from South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who hosted the town hall event, about what he would do to help people struggling to make ends meet. Biden suggested an $8,000 tax credit to help pay for child care, helping hourly workers through a $15 minimum and combating excessive non-compete agreements, and expanding access to healthcare.
Biden came under fire for comments he made at the June fundraiser in which he pointed to his relationships with segregationist senators in the 1970s as an example of civility. Primary rivals Kamala Harris and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey condemned his comments, and after 17 days of scrutiny and dipping in the polls, Biden apologized for how he phrased his point.
In his campaign reboot swing through South Carolina over the weekend, Biden tried to stress his vision for the future and brush off criticisms about his past positions on desegregation busing, the 1994 crime bill and a 2005 bill that made it harder to declare bankruptcy.
“I say let’s talk about the future instead of talking about the past,” Biden told reporters Sunday. He stressed his connection to former President Barack Obama at many points during the trip.
Besides Sanders, who at 77 is a year older than Biden, other Democratic candidates have sporadically challenged Biden as representing a lack of change, after decades in elected office.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke in June slammed Biden as a “return to the past,” adding, “You cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that’s good enough.”
