Attacking Biden pays dividends
As the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden is drawing flak from fellow Democrats and progressive groups concerned that he's insufficiently left of center — and it's paying off.
The best example is Biden's announcement last week that after decades of supporting the Hyde Amendment, which keeps federal money from being used for abortion (with limited exceptions), he now opposes it.
As the issue bubbled up, Biden's campaign said he would support repealing the Hyde Amendment “if abortion avenues currently protected under Roe were threatened.” This wasn't close to good enough for abortion-rights groups.
The head of NARAL said there is “no political or ideological excuse” for Biden's stance. She said it “translates into discrimination against poor women and women of color, plain and simple.”
The president of Emily's List, which works to elect abortion-rights Democratic females, said
it's “unacceptable” for any major Democratic candidate for president to back the Hyde Amendment.
Today, anything but full-throated support abortion is anathema to many Democrats. Indeed, the party's platform in 2016 included an explicit call to repeal the Hyde Amendment. The U.S. House may soon vote on whether to nix the ban. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says changing the law is “not about the politics, it's about what's right.” Sen. Bernie Sanders said flatly: “There is #NoMiddleGround on women's rights.”
Biden waved the white flag, saying that the Hyde Amendment is discriminatory. “If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's ZIP code,” he said.
Just about everyone in the 23-person field, it seems, is taking jabs at Biden, criticizing such things as his support for the 1994 crime bill (signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton) and his vote in favor of the Iraq war.
Biden has been a favorite target at a recent state Democratic Party gatherings in San Francisco and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Pete Buttigieg, for example, said Democrats couldn't promise “to take us back to the 2000s or 1990s.”
The criticism hasn't made much of a dent. Biden has continued to poll well since entering the race in late April — in a recent RealClearPolitics average several national polls, he had a 16-point lead over runnerup Sanders. This would seem to indicate that Democratic voters are OK with a more moderate voice.
Karl Rove, who led George W. Bush's successful campaigns for the presidency, wrote that the recent attacks against Biden “are a taste of what's come; look for rivals to brutalize Mr. Biden in the run-up to the late-June and late-July debates, during the debates, and in their aftermath.”
They may as well keep it up. As Biden showed with his switch on the Hyde Amendment, he's listening.