Joe Biden claimed to be politically infallible in the face of attacks lobbed at him by rivals to the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I’m not saying that it’s guaranteed I win, but name me a nominee who’s taken as many hits from the beginning of them announcing. … Who has taken the hits? You all declare me — not you, editorially in a broad sense declare me — dead, and guess what? I ain’t dead. I’m not going to die,” the former vice president told the New York Times’s editorial board.
The quip from Biden, 77, earned a pithy response from the outlet’s Kathleen Kingsbury.
“Everybody dies,” Kingsbury said.
“I’m not going to die politically,” he replied.
Sen. Kamala Harris from California experienced a brief surge in polling and fundraising after confronting Biden during the opening primary debate in Miami last summer over his opposition to federally mandated busing in the 1960s and 1970s. She blunted her momentum by confusing her own position on the issue before voters starting criticizing the move as being too practiced and inauthentic.
Then, during the September debate in Houston, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro’s line about Biden forgetting what he said earlier in the night generated mixed reviews for insinuating the 36-year Delaware senator was growing senile.
Harris dropped out of the Democratic race for the White House last December. Castro ended his own bid this month before endorsing former opponent Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
“Everybody who’s hit me is out,” Biden told the New York Times in the interview released Friday.
