It’s not the “Goofy Uncle Joe” persona that has ever bothered me, Mr. Biden. It’s that cringe-inducing support for Clarence Thomas in 1991 that burns the fucking hell out of me. I will never forget that. Never.
This is going to be unpleasant to watch, as Joe shuffles off the political stage.
He voted against Thomas in the end though getting there involved lots of bloviating.
It’s understandable the Veep wouldn’t want to be hung with that name. People surely know that the original “Uncle Joe” was Josef Stalin, and it was Churchill and FDR who gave him that benevolent nickname. That is, before he went on to starve and murder as many 20 million of his own people if not more.
Haven’t watched yet, but sounds like still regrets it every day?
I watched the Anita Hill testimony when it happened and I don’t recall Biden supporting Thomas. I watched the HBO movie ‘Confirmation’ the other day and I didn’t get the sense that Biden supported him either but Republicans went to war to get him confirmed.
icymi - This is a good article I read before watching the movie.
‘It was just awful’: The Clarence Thomas hearings, in the words of those who were there
I didn’t realize Thomas only had 19 months experience on the Federal bench before being nominated and approximately 70 percent of the AA community supported his confirmation,
That would have been even uglier to watch, quite frankly. Joe wrote the '94 crime bill (and he says he doesn’t regret it in this interview), the Thomas hearings would be hitting him really hard with HBO releasing its movie, and Joe has always been deeply in the pockets of credit card companies…its huge in Delaware.
Plus, he was hinting at running a campaign based on pain and misery, due to his son’s death. That alone would have been a disaster.
I like the man a lot, but there are some very good reasons he has failed badly in both of his presidential campaigns. All of those reasons are still there, too.
Biden didn’t support Thomas. He wanted to get the hearing over with it and emerge the wise old man, but only after he’d given a marathon speech for the benefit of Hill and wouldn’t allow more witnesses on her behalf to appear (giving the “benefit of the doubt” or some nonsense to Thomas). In some ways what the Rs did in their blind, rabid unthinking support for Thomas was payback for the way Bork was treated a few years earlier with Ted Kennedy leading the fight.
Perhaps you are younger than I and didn’t watch the hearing live or didn’t understand it as a younger person, but it was disgraceful and disrespectful to this woman and led to an awareness for the first time that workplace sexual harassment was not simply an imagined problem. It was real and pervasive, still is in many workplaces…
I like ‘Joe’. I have always liked him. He didn’t ‘support’ Clarence Thomas but he was a sexist when it came to Anita Hill. The crime bill? EVERYONE supported it but now, looking back, with hindsight being 20-20 all the people that had NOTHING to do with it have decided to hang them out to dry. Please.
That Democracy Now woman used that confirmation fiasco to trash talk Biden on Real Time last weekend. Maybe her show should be called Democracy Then.
Amy Goodman? Yeah, that’s understandable. But I suspect it was because Joe tried so hard to be non partisan and demonstrate restraint rather than go after Thomas as fiercely as Kennedy did Bork. You’re either for or against as Hatch, Simpson et al demonstrated. Hill was on the stand for a total of 11 hours (that must be the magic number for Rs persecuting women), and it was riveting but only as a freeway car crash is riveting
I realize he doesn’t like it, but it’s actually been a coat of protective armor for him.
Anyone who’s been around as long as Biden has will make the occasional faux pas, misstatement, call it what you will.
But this Uncle Joe image he has is protective…you can’t hold a grudge against your good ole uncle. It endears him to regular people, so when he uses the f word publically, for example,he doesn’t get a lot of grief for it. You know that Obama would.
Sigh. I would have voted for him in a heartbeat over the current Democratic choices. 
If the foo shits wear it.
I 100% agree with your take on those hearings as well as on Biden’s role in them… I was riveted to the TV watching them. The only “good” that came of them was the increasing popular awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace, almost the beginning of the long, lonesome, and gradual trek to actually eliminate its acceptance, let alone its institutionalization. I was dismayed when Biden finally shut down Hill’s witnesses, but it was Hatch who really carried the water there, dismissively, contemptuously sexist, though he was not alone of his ideological buddies.
If he didn’t have the “goofy Uncle Joe” persona to excuse away all of his gaffes and offensive/stupid comments, he’d be thought of as creepy Uncle Joe. I think he doth protest too much.
There are only a couple of things that get me irrationally riled up, one is the Thomas hearing and the other is the Florida recount.
Safe to say now that most of the AA community regrets supporting him.
Nothing has really changed though, as far as women not being taken seriously about sexual harassment allegations and the way they’re treated
I was hoping he would run, serve one term, and bring up a fresh face as his Veep for 2020. He is certainly more likable than HRC or Bernie and a lot smarter than people give him credit for. He can smile while twisting the knife.