Joe Biden: Clueless and Incoherent
Biden: Nonsense or No Sense? (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
W.J. Astore
There was another Democratic debate this week, and I have to admit I missed it. I've been checking the highlights (or lowlights, if you prefer), and Joe Biden, as usual, figures prominently.
First, here's his stunningly paternalistic, clueless, and incoherent response to a question on the legacies of slavery, segregation, and racial discrimination:
Well, they have to deal with the — look, there’s institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Redlining, banks, making sure we are in a position where — look, you talk about education. I propose that what we take the very poor schools, the Title I schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise to the $60,000 level.
Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home. We have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are — I’m married to a teacher, my deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. Make sure that every single child does, does in fact, have 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds go to school. Not day care, school.
We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help, they don’t want — they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the phone — make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background — will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.
Make sure you have the record player on at night?
How difficult is it, really, to admit to the legacy of slavery in this country? But Biden would rather jumble a lot of words together, perhaps based on a few ideas that he memorized poorly. So he mentions segregation and the practice of banks redlining predominately black/minority neighborhoods and denying them loans (which he doesn't explain), then he pivots to education and social workers while suggesting the solution to helping minority kids to learn is for them to hear more words coming from record players and phones at night.
And Democrats think this man is going to defeat Donald Trump in 2020?
Second, Joe Biden was attacking Bernie Sanders on the cost of Medicare for All. When Sanders accurately noted that Americans pay twice as much per capita for health care as Canadians do under their national health care system, Biden's response was three words: "This is America."
So apparently it's the American way to pay twice as much as other countries for equivalent health care. It's the American way to be denied coverage, to pay large co-pays and deductibles, and to go into bankruptcy because of a serious medical condition.
"This is America." I feel better already!
Not so incredibly, the Democratic establishment would rather lose to Trump with a candidate like Biden than win with a candidate like Bernie. And so Biden's non-sequiturs, his gaffes, his prejudices, and indeed his stunning incoherence are shrugged off as "That's Biden being Biden."
I may not have watched last week's debate, but I have a strong sense of who won: Donald Trump.