Biden is the most reliable alternative for corporate America. He has what Sanders completely lacks -- vast experience as an elected official serving the interests of credit-card companies, big banks, insurance firms and other parts of the financial services industry. His alignment with corporate interests has been comprehensive. It was a fulcrum of his entire political career when, in 1993, Sen. Biden voted yes while most Democrats in Congress voted against NAFTA.
In recent months, from his pro-corporate vantage point, Biden has been taking potshots at the progressive populism of Bernie Sanders. At a gathering in Alabama last fall, Biden said: "Guys, the wealthy are as patriotic as the poor. I know Bernie doesn't like me saying that, but they are." Later, Biden elaborated on the theme when he told an audience at the Brookings Institution, "I don't think five hundred billionaires are the reason we're in trouble. The folks at the top aren't bad guys."
Overall, in sharp contrast to the longstanding and continuin
But lately, some independent-minded journalists have been exhuming what "Lunch Bucket Joe" is eager to keep buried. For instance:
** Libby Watson, Splinter News:"Joe Biden is telling striking workers he's their friend while taking money from, and therefore being beholden to, the class of people oppressing them. According to Axios, Biden's first fundraiser will be with David Cohen, the executive vice president of and principal lobbyist for Comcast. Comcast is one of America's most hated companies, and for good reason. It represents everything that sucks for the modern consumer-citizen, for whom things like internet or TV access are extremely basic necessities, but who are usually given the option of purchasing it from just one or two companies." What's more, Comcast supports such policies as "ending net neutrality and repealing broadband privacy protections. . . . And Joe Biden is going to kick off his presidential campaign by begging for their money."
** Ryan Cooper, The Week:"As a loyal toady of the large corporations (especially finance, insurance, and credit cards) that put their headquarters in Delaware because its suborned government allows them to evade regulations in other states, Biden voted for repeated rounds of deregulation in multiple areas and helped roll back anti-trust policy -- often siding with Republicans in the process. He was a key architect of the infamous 2005 bankruptcy reform bill which made means tests much more strict and near-impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy."
** Paul Waldman, The American Prospect:"Joe Biden, we are told over and over, is the one who can speak to the disaffected white men angry at the loss of their primacy. He's the one who doesn't like abortion, but is willing to let the ladies have them. He's the one who tells white people to be nice to immigrants, even as he mirrors their xenophobia ('You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,' he said in 2006). He's the one who validates their racism and sexism while gently trying to assure them that they're still welcome in the Democratic Party. . . . It's not yet clear what policy agenda Biden will propose, though it's likely to be pretty standard Democratic fare that rejects some of the more ambitious goals other candidates have embraced. But Biden represents something more fundamental: a link to the politics and political style of the past."
** Rebecca Traister, The Cut:"Much of what Democrats blame Republicans for was enabled, quite literally, by Biden: Justices whose confirmation to the Supreme Court he rubber-stamped worked to disembowel affirmative action, collective bargaining rights, reproductive rights, voting rights. . . . In his years in power, Biden and his party (elected thanks to a nonwhite base enfranchised in the 1960s) built the carceral state that disproportionately imprisons and disenfranchises people of color, as part of what Michelle Alexander has described as the New Jim Crow. With his failure to treat seriously claims of sexual harassment made against powerful men on their way to accruing more power (claims rooted in prohibitions that emerged from the feminist and civil-rights movements of the 1970s), Biden created a precedent that surely made it easier for accused harassers, including Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, to nonetheless ascend. Economic chasms and racial wealth gaps have yawned open, in part thanks to Joe Biden's defenses of credit card companies, his support of that odious welfare-reform bill, his eagerness to support the repeal of Glass-Steagall."
One of Biden's illuminating actions came last year in Michigan when he gave a speech -- for a fee of $200,000 including "travel allowance" -- that praised the local Republican congressman, Fred Upton, just three weeks before the mid-term election. From the podium, the former vice president lauded Upton as "one of the finest guys I've ever worked with." For good measure, Biden refused to endorse Upton's Democratic opponent, who went on to lose by less than 5 percent.
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