This is why Joe Biden’s final campaign is doomed: He’s too easy a target.
Biden is running on his foreign policy credentials, so there he was Thursday at the Chuck Hagel Forum in Global Leadership at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, trying to make a point about the spread of Trump’s toxicity by citing the way Mike Pence was treated in Munich last month. Here’s what he said:
“The fact of the matter is it was followed on by a guy who’s a decent guy, our vice president, who stood before this group of allies and leaders and said, ‘I’m here on behalf of President Trump,’ and there was dead silence. Dead silence.”
I have helpfully bold-faced the offending phrase. Personally, I don’t think Mike Pence is a decent guy, I think he’s the typical mean little Bible-thumping prick, but Biden is saying this rhetorically, to make the point that if Pence represented anyone but Trump he would have gotten the polite applause he expected. But some people didn’t hear it that way.
Actress and activist Cynthia Nixon took to the Twitterverse immediately to ask Biden to “please consider how this falls on the ears of our community.” Biden quickly acknowledged she was right, that “there is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights.” But the damage was already done.
Nixon fleshed out the cause for her concern with a WaPo op-ed today, and it made clear a smile-and-a-handshake apology isn’t gonna cut it. After ticking off the lowlights of Pence’s attacks on gays and women in his Christianist career, she turns her attention to Biden:
When politicians of a certain age reminisce about the “civility” that used to define Washington, it’s telling that the old guard conveniently forgets that this decorum has never been extended to all. … [W]hen Biden was vice president, it’s true that Republicans largely granted him a level of respect — but that came at President Barack Obama’s expense. They treated Biden with deference at the same time that they were questioning Obama’s birthplace and religion. That’s not decency — that’s racism.
In January, Biden said that one of the things he’s criticized for is the fact that he likes Republicans, joking, “Okay, well bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” But the problem isn’t getting along with Republicans. The problem is legitimizing an agenda of hateful discrimination. It’s about the fear that someone who would give Pence the benefit of the doubt in the name of civility might also be willing to bargain away our rights in the name of bipartisanship. … This is not a time for hollow civility. This is a time to fight.
Even if you don’t agree with that, get used to it. That’s where the energy to win elections comes from. The desire to take down the Democratic old guard is strong, and Biden will be its first, and easiest, target.