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No Malarkey Here!... By Popular Request, the Joe Biden Thread

A piece written by David Axelrod? The guy who ran Obama's campaign. I'm sure that's completely unbiased. That's like posting a piece on Trump by Roger Stone.

I'm planning on voting Liberation. I don't want any of these people in power.

Anyway, here's a classic Biden clip from the ultra-right wing Guardian:

 
Biden Had Said He Worked the Coal Mines, Was Shot at in Iraq, and Marched in the Civil Rights Movement. He Has Not Done Those Things

If there's one thing Joe Biden loves more than approaching women from behind and putting his hands on their shoulders, it's stealing valor. Not just troop valor, but coal miner valor, civil rights valor—if you've got valor, Joe Biden will steal it.

In a speech on Friday, the former vice president regaled the New Hampshire crowd with a very emotional story about a trip he once took into the "godforsaken country" of Konar province in Afghanistan. Advisors warned Biden that it would be too dangerous for him to go—but no, the vice president waved their concerns aside. "We can lose a vice president," he recalled thinking. "We can’t lose many more of these kids." He was going to present a Navy captain, who, under fire, had retrieved the body of another American soldier from a 60-foot ravine, with a Silver Star.

"This guy climbed down a ravine, carried this guy up on his back under fire," Biden said. "The general wanted me to pin the Silver Star on him. I got up there, and this is the God's truth, my word as a Biden. He stood at attention. I went to pin it on him. He said, 'Sir, I don't want the damn thing. Do not pin it on me, sir. Please, sir, do not do that. He died! He died!'"

Very dramatic, and according to the Washington Post, almost entirely made up. In the three minutes it took to tell the story, the Post reports, "Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony." The frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primary does not appear to be overly concerned with these kinds of details, however. "I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but the central point is it was absolutely accurate what I said," he told the Post and Courier.
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Exclusive: 1996 court document confirms Tara Reade told of harassment in Biden’s office

A court document from 1996 shows former Senate staffer Tara Reade told her ex-husband she was sexually harassed while working for Joe Biden in 1993.

The declaration — exclusively obtained by The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California — does not say Biden committed the harassment nor does it mention Reade’s more recent allegations of sexual assault.

Reade’s then-husband Theodore Dronen wrote the court declaration. Dronen at the time was contesting a restraining order Reade filed against him days after he filed for divorce, Superior Court records show.
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It's always going to be "he said, she said" with an allegation, unless someone else saw or videoed the alleged incident. Reade's allegation is gaining in credibility, as evidenced by the article I posted a link to.



 
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What 74 former Biden staffers think about Tara Reade’s allegations

Over his decades-long career in the Senate, former Vice President Joe Biden was known as a demanding but fair and family-oriented boss, devoted to his home life in Delaware and committed to gender equality in his office.

He was not on a list of “creepy” male senators that female staffers told each other to avoid in the elevators on Capitol Hill.

Yet Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was also a toucher, seemingly oblivious to whether physical contact made some women uncomfortable. That behavior has persisted in recent years. Biden is now facing fresh scrutiny after a former aide in March charged that he sexually assaulted her when she worked in his Senate office in the early 1990s, an allegation Biden has categorically denied.

The PBS NewsHour spoke with 74 former Biden staffers, of whom 62 were women, in order to get a broader picture of his behavior toward women over the course of his career, how they see the new allegation, and whether there was evidence of a larger pattern.

None of the people interviewed said that they had experienced sexual harassment, assault or misconduct by Biden. All said they never heard any rumors or allegations of Biden engaging in sexual misconduct, until the recent assault allegation made by Tara Reade. Former staffers said they believed Reade should be heard, and acknowledged that their experiences do not disprove her accusation.

full article
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New Reporting Increases Doubts on Tara Reade’s Allegation Against Joe Biden

three detailed reports — by Vox’s Laura McGann, PBS NewsHour, and Politico’s Natasha Korecki — have delved into Reade’s allegations. Neither reaches a definitive conclusion. But all of them on balance add a lot of grounds for skepticism. At this point, Reade’s allegation seems to me to be more likely to be false than true.
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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...iden-allegation-reporting-vox-pbs-doubts.html
 
Should democratic socialists support Joe Biden?


The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) set off a firestorm last month with a six-word tweet. “We are not endorsing Joe Biden,” it declared, reaffirming a public commitment made at last year’s DSA convention that Bernie Sanders was the only Democrat the group would endorse. Outraged pundits condemned the tweet as privileged; “from red to orange,” intoned one centrist wit. Leaders of the 1960s New Left wrote an open letter urging reconsideration.
As current and former co-chairs of the North Jersey chapter of DSA, we’d like to offer a leftist perspective on a controversy dominated by voices outside the contemporary left. The DSA is a democratic socialist organization that is fighting to create a society that works democratically for the people rather than the 1%. In North New Jersey, this has meant campaigning for Medicare for All, fighting to end our state’s massive ICE detention facilities, creating mutual aid networks and running our own candidates in local elections.

Most recently, our chapter engaged in a DSA for Bernie campaign in order to not just canvass for Bernie but to talk to thousands of people about democratic socialism and invite them into our movement to transform our society. This was a national campaign carried out by DSA chapters across the country who saw Bernie’s campaign as an explicitly class-struggle movement that understood that in order for working people to thrive in the U.S., our leaders need to confront the pharmaceutical industries, Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, and companies such as Walmart and Amazon that constitute the ruling class of this country.

Meanwhile, here is how Joe Biden looks to those on the left: reactionary. His career has been defined by racism, extending from 1970s desegregation busing debates to mass incarceration; sexism and misogyny, from his support for the abortion restrictions of the Hyde Amendment to his silencing of Anita Hill, to the current allegations of sexual assault he faces; advocacy for insurance firms and the financial sector over the interests of working people; and avid support for the invasion of Iraq, the single greatest U.S. crime of the 21st century.

That’s a tough sell to any leftist wary of a return to the “normalcy” of the Obama years, which we remember as times of endless drone strikes and war, bailouts for banks, and more deportations than Trump has yet undertaken.

Yet this is the rhetoric we constantly hear: you must support Biden, or you’re responsible for Trump’s re-election! Think of the Supreme Court! (Despite, of course, the fact that Biden voted for Justice Scalia, helped assure Justice Thomas, and sat passively while Republicans stole Merrick Garland’s rightful seat.)

These arguments do not move many on the left, no matter how much you think they should. Good politics meets people where they are, not where you want them to be. DSA is a socialist organization, and as such, it will not and need not formally endorse Joe Biden, whose campaign merchandise proudly features “socialist” crossed off alongside “plutocrat,” as if they are equivalent. But defeating Trump and, more importantly, Trumpism are strategic DSA priorities, and to that end, we urge everyone to make more compelling arguments here by addressing left concerns.

Instead of vote-shaming the left, which might feel good but demonstrably does not work, those concerned about a Biden win might show that they are pushing Biden in more progressive directions. The COVID-19 pandemic is not just a medical crisis but a political one, ravaging communities already suffering from inequality. It shows clearly the need for much of the Sanders platform.

We believe swing state leftists should vote Biden, not because he deserves it but because a Democratic administration offers more fertile ground for the left than a Republican one, where we desperately scramble to fight for basic union, reproductive, immigrant, and queer/trans rights. For those seeking to build third-party power, we’ll do better under a Democrat as well, since Trump generates a false sense of “resistance” unity that obscures the deep divisions within the Dems.

But ultimately it’s Joe Biden’s job to win votes, not voters’ job to elect him. He won’t win without a coalition that includes significant support from Bernie Sanders voters. We don’t trust his promises or his platform, but serious overtures to the left such as commitments to cabinet positions for Sanders and brilliant flight-attendant union leader Sara Nelson would be a great start. Let’s defeat Trump and also the neoliberalism that spawned him!

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Biden tells Charlamagne Tha God: If you don't support me 'then you ain't black'

Former Vice President Joe Biden defended his record on race to Charlamagne Tha God on the popular radio show The Breakfast Club on Friday, at one point telling the host that if you support President Trump “then you ain’t black.”

An aide tried to cut off the interview after 11 minutes because Jill Biden needed the office to do her own livestreamed event, but Biden agreed to stay on longer.

After 18 minutes, the aide interjected again, leading Charlamagne to say jokingly: “You can’t do that to black media.”

“I do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at 6 o’clock,” Biden said, looking at his watch: “Uh oh. I’m in trouble.”

“Listen, you’ve got to come see us when you come to New York, V.P. Biden,” Charlamagne said. “It’s a long way until November. We've got more questions.”

“You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black."

Full article
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Biden’s ‘ain’t black’ gaffe responded to by Charlamagne Tha God

Joe Biden’s ‘you ain’t black’ gaffe--referring to black voters who may be considering Donald Trump--is responded to by radio host Charlamagne Tha God, on whose show Biden made this controversial statement. Charlamagne Tha God joins Joy Reid to discuss saying, ‘It has to come to a point where we stop putting the burden on black voters to show up for Democrats, and start putting the burden on Democrats to show up for black voters.’
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Biden suggests police could shoot assailants 'in the leg instead of the heart'

Joe Biden said Monday that police under attack in the line of duty should shoot their assailants “in the leg instead of the heart” as a way to avert the killing of civilians.

“Instead of standing there and teaching a cop, when there’s an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, you shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart is a very different thing. There’s a lot of different things that could change,” Biden said in a meeting with community leaders at Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Del.

Full article
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Joe Biden Names His Enemies
No other major-party nominee in history has called the political forces whipped up by a sitting president of the United States enemies of America. But that’s what Joe Biden did today.

“My fellow Americans, we’re facing formidable enemies. They include not only the coronavirus and the terrible impacts to the lives and livelihoods, but also the selfishness and fear that have loomed over our national life for the last three years,” Biden said, speaking from inside Philadelphia’s city hall. “I choose those words advisedly: selfishness and fear.”

Biden has warned for almost three years, since Donald Trump equivocated about the Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, that Americans are in the middle of a battle for the nation’s soul. That’s been the theme of his presidential campaign too. In speaking with advisers after watching the protests across the country last night, Biden was shaken. This wasn’t a metaphor anymore. This was a battle with batons and tanks and Molotov cocktails and hammers, going on in the streets.

Full article
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