DETROIT — Following a drop in the polls and mounting attacks from presidential primary rivals, Joe Biden asked attendees at the 110th annual NAACP Convention to help out his presidential bid.
“Look me over, I need your help,” Biden said in this closing statements during a presidential candidates forum at the conference on Wednesday.
The former vice president’s nearly 50 years in the public sphere has opened him up to attacks. At the Democratic presidential debates last month, primary rival Sen. Kamala Harris of California attacked Biden for working with segregationist senators in the 1970s. Earlier today, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said that Biden, who supported the 1994 crime bill, was an “architect of mass incarceration.”
Following the first Democratic presidential primary debates at the end of June, Biden dropped in the polls from an average of about 32% support on June 28 to a low of 26% on July 6, according to RealClearPolitics. His average is 28.6% today.
“Let’s get straight” about the 1994 crime bill, Biden said, noting that he “got engaged early on” with civil rights. He said that the 1994 crime bill came at a time with an epidemic of violence and said that the Congressional Black Caucus supported the bill.
Biden said that former President Barack Obama did a “significant background check” on Biden’s record when considering him to be vice president. “I doubt he would have picked me if these accusations about my record on civil rights were correct,” Biden said.
Despite referencing Obama to defend his record, Biden insisted that his ties to Obama are “not a crutch.”
“You ask President Obama, I didn’t need any crutch,” Biden said. “This is not a continuation of Barack’s and our administration. What it is, is there’s new problems. There’s new problems to be faced today that were different than the ones at the time.”
