This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1236179
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1236179
Did’t they bring in some big name consultant just the other day to help with this sort of horrible messaging? Or was this the improvement?
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Joe Biden is a racist and a hypocrite. The 1986 crime bill he wrote with segregationist senators set a minimum of five years for 5 grams of crack or 500 grams of powder cocaine, a 100-to-1 sentencing disparity.
Because white Americans vastly preferred powdered cocaine over crack cocaine, greater than 90% of the people sent to prison for small amounts of crack cocaine under this law were black Americans.
“Lock the S.O.B.s Up,” he said
But recently Biden’s son talked about his crack cocaine use and Biden changed his tune:
Joe and Jill Biden addressed their son Hunter’s struggle with addiction in a CNN interview on Monday night, calling him “courageous” and an “honorable, decent man.”
“Beau was my soul,” Biden said of his oldest son who died in 2015. "Hunter is my heart. "Hunter has been through some tough times, but he’s fighting.”
So Biden sent thousands of black men to prison for crack cocaine and destroyed their lives, but his son is “courageous” and an "honorable, decent man.”
Most of the black men that Biden sent to jail were just as honorable and decent.
We already have a racist President of the United States. We don’t need another one.
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Really TPM?
If the face of Naked Racist Fearmongering and Hate being openly espoused by the President of the United States, and echoed in pure Nuremberg Fashion by his increasingly fascist and adoring crowds, while the elected Republicans all run for cover to avoid commenting on it, you run THIS ARTICLE?
An “expose” of something that happened 45 years ago?!?!? By an avowed Bernie supporter (uncredited)?
I would expect to find such an article on HuffPost, or DailKos, but not on TPM.
The fucking “Democratic Circular Firing Squad” and their endless “Purity Pogroms” will be the Death of America and guarantee the re-election of Donald J. Trump and the metastasizing of Apartheid in America.
Sigh. We have met the Enemy, and he is US.
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You people just don’t understand. This is Biden’s grand strategy for the 2020 election. He’s trying to appeal to all of those “Reagan Democrats” that are out there.
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It is not a “Purity Pogrom” to point out when a Democrat says stupid shit. And Joe Biden says a lot of stupid shit.
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I read that last week or perhaps longer ago.
My first thought was that if asked, Hunter would have to say his dad is his trump card and wallet when all else fails. He drew a fifty grand a month salary from that Ukranian energy company for being on the board for years. He flew with his VP dad on Air Force 2 to China and signed a deal with his hedge fund for over a billion dollars. He got his Navy commission because of his dad. The age cutoff is age 40. Hunter was a few years older and still managed to get in when many that were younger and better qualified were turned down because of being 41 years of age.
It’s OK to help your children, but one should not use the elected office as a Senator to get your son on many board of directors and other jobs. Or into the Navy at age 44 when the cut off is 40. These will become a talking points by Trump among other things if Biden is our candidate.
That said, I don’t think I would call Biden a racist. Maybe he was leaning that way years ago, but people can and do change with the times.
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Here’s a different perspective on the impact of busing:
It’s OK to help your children, but one should not use the elected office as a Senator to get your son on many board of directors and other jobs. Or into the Navy at age 44 when the cut off is 40.
You’d be surprised what you would do to help a troubled son, especially after losing the other one. Not at all a Biden fan but let’s give the guy some slack. He was doing what he could to save his son.
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I speak here as someone who reads The Guardian primarily, but checks in on TPM and other news outlets. I’m pretty well informed, but not as into-it as most of you are, probably.
Honestly, I don’t know whether this piece should be here or not. At best it probably airs some the attacks that could be leveled at Biden re: this issue. At worst it’s another gun joining the “circular firing squad,” which is straight-up dangerous.
I think Biden has the best chance to beat Trump, mostly because the US is revealing itself to be one bigass racist/sexist country, and I think that could spell big trouble for the other front-runners (not to mention the republic itself.)
Pelosi, et al’s actions baffle me, except as part of some ultra-long game she’s playing in pure political self-interest. I imagine I’m not the only one who feels that way, and that’s not what the Dems want.
The Republicans are rabid. The only ones showing passion on our side are these women Trump’s attacking. They’ve got guts because they’d better have guts or they’ll be destroyed. The rest of the Dems are in the same boat; they just don’t believe it yet.
The Dems ought to take their strongest candidate (Biden), have him clear the frigging air and apologize for the however-many missteps in the past, then project a centrist (read appealing to whitey) message in support of the BIG message, “Trump Must Be Defeated. Vote Biden and Save the Country!” Then everybody get onboard and attack. Attack. ATTACK! (The Republicans, not each other.)
This is no time to triangulate. Dems of all persuasions, if you’re worth ANYTHING put the needs of the country before your own desires and get it together! Failure to do so could destroy Earth–I shit you not.
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What the hell? Trump is out there running a nakedly racist campaign and all some people can do is form a circular firing squad? As if the writer of this is some expert on this anyway…Good God, it was decades ago. Right now we have a far larger problem. But hey…let’s play into Trump’s hands…force stupid votes on impeachment so he can brag about the inevitable outcome…push an agenda that most Americans will not support and help this maniac get reelected. The left just can not get out of its own way.
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And so does the squad…in fact, if they had kept their beef with fellow Democrats off of twitter the whole party, including them, would be better off.
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All this took place before he lost his other son.
Sometimes tough love is best. Cut him off until he completes treatment. That’s what junkies generally have to go through. Hunter even divorced his wife and hooked up with his brother’s widow. I’m not feeling a lot of pity for Hunter. Ya think Hunter worked his way into the board of Amtrak on his own?
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It’s not that it happened 45 years ago; it’s that he’s defending it still today.
Proof?
Irony
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I think we are mostly on the same page on this issue @georgeh , but I would just say that Biden is very representative of where rank and file Democrats were on this issue.
I was vehemently and passionately against these polices. But after going to a couple of Democratic party meetings I realized these people don’t care or are actively supporting these policies.
So I left the Democratic party and joined the Libertarians in 1992 over the drug war, asset forfeiture and other touch points of the “tough on crime” era.
That is my very clear memory of the climate back then. There were no hero’s in the Democratic party, except for Kurt Schmoke, the former Mayor of Baltimore.
The most recognizable public figures against the drug war aside from Schmoke were conservatives. William F Buckley, George P Schultz, and a Republican appointed Judge hailing from Orange County of all places, James Gray.
If you are going to exclude Democrats who supported the drug war and mass incarceration back then, you won’t have enough left to form a baseball team.
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I believe Hunter is going through treatment now after his dad threw his hat into the ring. From what I understand he supposedly cut his romance with his brother’s wife AFTER his dad announced also. Somehow, I get the feeling that these were calculated political decisions. I could be wrong. When he was booted out of the Naval Reserve program about five years ago for cocaine, that would have been a good time for treatment.
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I am most mystified by the assumption by the “Purity Police” that someone (their “enemies” in particular) was/is not only UNWILLING to change their ideas over the space of 45 years, but is NOT ALLOWED to change their ideas.
Abraham Lincoln stated that he was willing to accept slavery in the south if it would guarantee they would preserve the Union. He then CHANGED HIS MIND after the southern states seceded and began open warfare against the Union.
It was Joe Biden who dragged Barack Obama kicking and screaming into recognizing LGBTQ rights and supporting same-sex marriage. He would not have done that 45 years ago, but he did it in 2014.
1975 was long, loooonnggg before most of the “Purity Police” were even stains upon their grandmother’s toilet seats, so for them to lecture those of us who were alive then about “how you should have thought” is ignorant self-righteous arrogance.
People change, and Joe Biden has changed a lot in 45 years, as have we all.
When I was 14 I was a crew-cut-wearing staunch Iowa-Republican who thought anti-war protesters were Lazy Cowardly Commies and the Bobby Kennedy was a stooge for the Catholic Church.
3 assassinations, police riots, 25,000 dead in Vietnam, and National Guard shooting unarmed demonstrators later, and I was a long-haired hippie wanna-be demonstrating against the war and dodging tear-gas and police batons. It only took 3 years for me to change drastically.
You have to give people the benefit of the doubt and no one is doing that. They live in an artificial world of absolutes. Are they “perfect” too? No. Nobody ever is.
Deal with it kids.
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I remember when Walter Mondale was the only one who could defeat Reagan. And John Kerry was the only one who could defeat Bush.
And Hillary Clinton was the only one who was going to beat the Republican (ultimately John McCain)
And Hillary Clinton was surely going to beat Trump!
Of the top 5 candidates, Joe Biden is probably the least likely candidate to beat Trump despite what the polls say today. Polls this far out from the primaries are rarely predictive of the actual nominee.
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And while we are obsessing over political stances from 30-50 years ago, let’s examine Sanders’ “honeymoon” in the Soviet Union:
The hours of footage include a scene of Sanders sitting with his delegation at a table under a portrait of Vladimir Lenin. Sanders can also be heard extolling the virtues of Soviet life and culture, even as he acknowledges some of their shortcomings.
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At this point in the 2008 cycle McCain’s campaign was on it’s way to being declared dead and Rudy Ghouliani was going to be the nominee…
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