Poor Joe Biden.
He probably thought the press would never treat him the way it treats conservatives. But that is the folly of feeding monsters. You think it will never come for you.
Newsrooms are showing Biden no mercy this week after Sen. Kamala Harris savaged him during the Democratic primary debate last week for his past opposition to the busing of students for the purpose of racial desegregation. Reporters are digging even harder now into old archives that, oddly enough, went untouched between the years 2008 and 2016, coming back with armfuls of clippings that suggest the 2020 Democratic front-runner has a … problematic past.
And all this as the commentariat embraces the position that it is racially insensitive for Biden to boast that he can work with anyone in Washington, even racists.
The former vice president must be confused. Neither Biden’s Democratic colleagues nor members of the press have ever expressed offense at his anecdotes about working cordially alongside segregationist Dixiecrats in the Senate. No one was talking about his position on busing before the debate. No one had cared about it since it was still relevant.
Yet here we are. Newsrooms are hitting Biden hard for his record on race, and all because his Democratic opponents have decided suddenly that he has a problem.
This sort of treatment is reserved normally for conservatives. You do not have to look any further than the 2012 presidential election to see that our fickle press loves taking cues from Democrats on what is “important” and “controversial,” even if it is some long-dead issue or something completely out of left field. Sometimes, the press will even create controversies where none previously existed.
Recall that ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos single-handedly made the supposed banning of birth control a major issue in 2012, even though none of the GOP candidates had proposed doing such a thing. Remember the bewildered look on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s face when Stephanopoulos said, “Do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy? … Do you believe states have that right or not?”
From that moment, a Democratic Party talking point was amplified tenfold. From that absurd question rose a frenzied months-long news cycle, Sandra Fluke, and a number of insane conspiracies alleging the Republican candidates supported bans on birth control. And all of it hyped and pursued eagerly by the press. The Obama/Biden campaign was happy to make hay of the issue, which, again, did not exist until Democrats and their allies in newsrooms decided it did.
Then there was the 100% manufactured outrage over Romney’s “binders full of women” remark. There was nothing offensive about what he said. It was not even terribly awkward. But that did not matter to newsrooms or Democrats. Biden himself said on the campaign stump, “What I can’t understand is how [Romney] has gotten in this sort of 1950s time warp in terms of women.” There are additional examples of absurdities hyped by the Obama/Biden campaign and the news media during the 2012 campaign, including nonsense about Big Bird and bayonets. Remember: This is all from just one election year.
But now that same monster that Biden was once happy to feed has come to devour him.
Enjoy your Borking, Lunch Bucket Joe.
