Time for Biden to come out swinging
Poor Joe.
The next thing you know fellow candidates will douse him with buckets of water at the next debate, the way thugs do to cops in New York.
Joe Biden, the Rodney Dangerfield of the Democrat Party, can’t get no respect.
And the funny thing is that Biden, 76, a politician from the old school — when politicians respected their elders — would sit back and take it, like the New York cops do.
Like the cops, who can’t get leftist New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to support them, neither can Biden get Barack Obama, the man he served as vice president for eight years, to come to his defense.
A few words from Obama might temper the attacks on Biden from fellow Democratic presidential candidates, so sadly obvious at the last debate, and continuing today.
But it’s probably too late for that. Obama has his own legacy, such as it is, to worry about, as he, too, has come under fire from Democrats who used to worship him — when he was in power, that is.
It has been so long that a politically pampered Biden has been called upon to throw a punch that he has forgotten how. Eight years working for Obama will do that to you.
Still, Obama’s lack of support has helped make Biden an open target. What has to infuriate Biden is the attacks on his long record in the U.S. Senate, and his service as Obama’s vice president, are coming from people who have hardly any record at all.
He appeared puzzled when Julian Castro, former HUD secretary under Obama/Biden, criticized him over Obama’s immigration policy. Castro was but a former mayor of San Antonio before the HUD appointment.
“I never heard him talk about any of this when he was the secretary.” Biden said.
Biden is ending up not only defending himself but defending Obama as well. And when Biden is seeking help and guidance from Obama, Obama is missing in action. Obama won’t even endorse him.
Biden even took grief from de Blasio, of all people, over immigration. De Blasio’s record as mayor is so laughable that you would run away from it, not run on it.
Biden does not seem to know what he is up against.
What he is up against is a swarm of hungry, younger candidates, all slouching toward the Oval Office, who believe that the only way they can rise is to tear old Joe down. And they are succeeding.
Of course, Biden, who appears to have lost his fastball — if he ever had one — is contributing to his own political demise. He seems surprised and ill-prepared for the attacks coming upon him from all sides.
It is almost as though he thought his candidacy would be welcomed by fellow Democrats, rather than mocked. He comes across as an old general who wants to talk about what he did in the last war, a war that everybody has forgotten.
In the past — before U.S. politics got so vicious — Biden, a solid Democratic Party stalwart, who served as a longtime U.S. senator, previous two-time presidential candidate and Obama’s vice president, would have been shown some respect. Not now. Now he is dissed.
Biden could have reached down and come up with his fastball during his closing remarks at the last debate. But it wasn’t there. Instead his age and confusion showed in his mangled closing remarks.
Earlier he maintained that the country was in no condition to undergo another eight years with Trump as president. The president is limited to two four-year terms.
Biden has a long history of gaffes. Earlier he confused the late former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died in 2013, with the recently replaced Prime Minister Theresa May.
Last week, speaking at a fundraiser in San Diego, he mistakenly referred to the horrible mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, as having taken place in Houston and Michigan.
As Yeats observed, “An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless, soul clap its hands and sing …”
Which means that Biden had better begin to show some signs of life before he is carted off the stage.
Bernie Sanders is 77, and Elizabeth Warren is 70. And while they come across as an old married couple bickering over who burnt the morning toast, both have shown spirit, stamina and energy.
It’s what Biden needs.