A longtime ally of Joe Biden whose daughter was a policy adviser to Jill Biden is facing backlash after writing a column telling Kamala Harris that she would have befriended Southern segregationist Democrats in the 1970s just as the former vice president did.
Ross Baker, 81, a Rutgers University political science professor, argued in a USA Today article that “if Kamala Harris had been in the Senate in the 1970s she “would have been as ingratiating and collegial with Southern segregationists from her own party as she accuses Biden of being back then.”
This year, Baker defended Biden, 76, against multiple allegations from women of unwanted touching by describing him as “a man whose humanity happens to express itself in innocent physical contact.” In 2015, he lavished praise on Biden and urged him to run for president. In 2001, he described him as a man who engaged in “good personal politics and good party policy.”
Addressing Kamala Harris directly, Baker wrote: “These accommodations, Sen. Harris, were not evidence of collaboration with the enemies of civil rights or an abandonment of principle.”
“They were, with no small amount of resignation, laying the groundwork for the landmark civil rights advances of the future.”
Baker has deep links to Democrats in the Senate, where Biden served for 36 years. He was a consultant to the Democratic caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives and senior adviser to Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican who later became President Barack Obama’s Pentagon chief.
In 2008, 2012, and 2016, he was scholar in residence for Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader in the Senate. Before becoming senior policy adviser to Jill Biden, his daughter Sarah worked in Obama’s Office of White House Counsel.
Baker’s article sparked fierce criticism across Twitter, including from the daughter of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
“Respectfully @Rosbake1 I’ve known Kamala Harris since law school — your analysis is flat wrong Having manners is different than leaving people behind,” Christine Pelosi tweeted. “Harris has excellent courtroom [sic] demeaner yet never yielded to old bull judges; I doubt she’d yield to old bull segregationists.”
Respectfully @Rosbake1 I’ve known Kamala Harris since law school — your analysis is flat wrong. Having manners is different than leaving people behind. Harris has excellent courtroom demeaner yet never yielded to old bull judges; I doubt she’d yield to old bull segregationists. https://t.co/TNL76mVnFY
— Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) July 2, 2019
“The analysis isn’t therefore ‘would you be civil to segregationists?’ but ‘would you leave people behind in cutting a legislative deal with segregationists? Would you find common cause with them to specifically leave people behind?’ Answers for the Kamala I know: No and no,” she added.
Other journalists questioned the premise of Baker’s piece.
“Oh dear. This is a spectacularly ill-judged piece. A professor whitesplains to Kamala Harris ‘what it was like’ in the 70s — and why Biden was right to be nice to racists,” wrote The Hill’s White House columnist Niall Stanage. “The prof. had a ‘ringside seat,’ see? Unlike Kamala, who only had a bus seat.”
Oh dear.
This is a spectacularly ill-judged piece.
A professor whitesplains to Kamala Harris “what it was like” in the 70s — and why Biden was right to be nice to racists.
The prof. had a “ringside seat,” see?
Unlike Kamala, who only had a bus seat.https://t.co/DNQ7w8t3tn— Niall Stanage (@NiallStanage) July 2, 2019
Jennifer Rubin, a political columnist for the Washington Post, wrote Tuesday that Baker’s argument “should be easily dismissed for deliberately (or cluelessly) disregarding the entire point Harris raised,” while Politico reporter Christopher Cadelago said Baker’s piece was a “pretty bold claim.”
Baker’s column wasn’t the first time he offered a full-throated defense of Biden’s controversial behavior. In an April column for USA Today, Baker said the former vice president’s “physicality is a mark of old-school politicians, not a creepy old man.”
“I believe that [Lucy Flores] has misconstrued the actions of Vice President Biden,” Baker wrote about the former Nevada state representative and activist who accused Biden of sniffing her hair and kissing the back of her head against her wishes. “His gesture was not a prelude to seduction or a cheap thrill. It was gesture by a man whose humanity happens to express itself in innocent physical contact.”
Baker told the Washington Examiner he had not coordinated with the Biden campaign. “I started following Biden around when I was on sabbatical working on my book Friend and Foe in the U.S. Senate [1980]. Biden in particular fascinated me as a young lawmaker.” He said he’d only spoken to the former vice president once in his life, about summer homes on the New Jersey shore.
He added: “Some of the most liberal senators worked with these Southern Democrats on totally unrelated policies” and Biden was merely “representing his constituents” in opposing busing.
“Wilmington, Delaware, was at the center of the busing programs when Biden was in the Senate,” Baker said. “When I heard Harris talk about busing [at the Democratic debate], I wasn’t even sure she was in favor of it. She sounded very ambiguous on her answer.”
In August 2015, Baker implored Biden to run in a USA Today column that cited Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses. “There is no prominent figure in American politics whose image has improved so dramatically in recent years,” he wrote. “From being the butt of unjustified criticism that he was the clown prince of American politics, Joe Biden is increasingly looking like the only adult in the room.
When Democrats took control of the Senate in 2001, Biden chose to lead the chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee over Judiciary. At the time, many believed the latter would have been a better choice politically because it meant Biden could lead the charge against President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.
Yet Baker called Biden’s move “good personal politics and good party policy,” in the Los Angeles Times.
“Biden’s political interests are better served by chairing Foreign Relations where, remarkably, he enjoys a cordial relationship with the ranking Republican, Helms,” he wrote.
