Sen. Kamala Harris said Wednesday that Joe Biden must decide for himself whether to apologize for touting his past work with two segregationist senators.
The California senator and the former vice president are competing in the Democratic primary to challenge President Trump in 2020. Harris criticized Biden, the current front-runner, for praising his ability to work with former Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia.
“I have a great deal of respect for Vice President Biden,” Harris told reporters outside the Capitol. “But to coddle the reputations of segregationists, of people who, if they had their way, I would literally not be standing here as a member of the United States Senate is … misinformed and it’s wrong.”
Harris declined to call for an apology from Biden.
“Let’s be very clear that the senators that he is speaking of with such adoration are individuals that made and built their reputations on segregation,” Harris said. “The Ku Klux Klan celebrated the election of one of them.”
“I appreciate the importance of working with people and finding common ground, but to suggest that individuals who literally made it their lives’ work to take America back on the issue of race is a real problem for me,” Harris concluded.
.@SenKamalaHarris on Biden: “To coddle the reputations of segregationists…is misinformed and wrong.” pic.twitter.com/jpM02p5jiy
— Mariam Khan (@MKhan47) June 19, 2019
Biden touted his work with Eastland, who died in 1986, and Talmadge, who died in 2002, at a New York fundraiser on Tuesday. Eastland repeatedly said black people were “an inferior race,” and Talmadge characterized civil rights legislation as “sanctions aimed at the white Southerner.”
Speaking of his ability to work with people he disagreed with, Biden said, “Well, guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
