Joe bids to fix flop
Tries to spin deseg debate-slam by Harris
Joe Biden issued an emotional defense of his civil rights record on Friday as he sought to limit the damage from his disastrous debate confrontation with Sen. Kamala Harris.
The Democratic front-runner met with a smiling Rev. Jesse Jackson before telling a mostly black audience that he is determined to win election as a “president who stands against racism, the forces of intolerance.”
“I heard, and I listened to, and I respect Sen. Harris,” Biden said. “But we all know that 30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime commitment to civil rights.”
The well-received speech at Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH group in Chicago was designed to stop the bleeding after Biden’s shaky performance in his debut Democratic presidential debate.
At one point, Biden turned to Jackson and said, “I know and you know I fought my heart out to ensure that civil rights, and voting rights, equal rights are enforced.”
But Biden hit a snag before he even spoke when Jackson told CNN that Biden was “on the wrong side of history” when he opposed federally ordered busing to achieve school desegregation.
Harris stole the show Thursday with an emotional confrontation with Biden in which she recounted her own experience going to an integrated school because of desegregation efforts.
Biden struggled to respond to Harris (D-Calif.) as a record 18 million viewers watched, reinforcing worries among Democrats about his age and ability to counterpunch in a potential matchup with President Trump.
Many black Democrats were dismayed to hear Biden defending his stand on busing just days after he invoked his college work with racist segregationists in the Senate.
Biden is counting on strong support from black voters, many of whom revere him for his role as President Barack Obama’s loyal lieutenant.
But his political roots are as a centrist 1970s Democrat from a mid-Atlantic state, a profile that carries plenty of racial baggage. Harris laid bare those skeletons, leaving some wondering if Biden might be permanently damaged with black voters.
Black voters play an outsized role in the Democratic nominating process because they dominate the party in southern states like the thirdin-the-nation vote in South Carolina and often vote largely in a bloc.
Like Harris, Obama was still a long shot against frontrunner Hillary Clinton — like Biden, a white candidate with a history of black support — until he crushed her in South Carolina. He went on to sweep the southern primaries and win northern urban areas with near-unanimous support of black voters.
In 2016, Clinton used the same strategy to build a huge lead on Bernie Sanders. A key to her victory was the lack of a black candidate who might easily have grabbed votes across the South.
Polls will show in upcoming days whether the first two Democratic debates have dramatically shaken up the race.
Harris rocketed into first place from fourth or fifth place in betting prediction markets after her commanding debate performance, with prediction sites giving her a 23% chance of winning the nomination.
Biden plunged to just below that along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who registered a strong showing in Wednesday’s debate. Sanders also saw his support drop from second into a tight fight with Pete Buttigieg for the fourth spot.