Young progressive Democrats don’t want another old, white man leading the country.
And that’s bad news for Joe Biden, a career politician who announced his bid in April.
Biden, age 76, spent 36 years in Congress before serving in the White House alongside President Obama; that gives his enemies more than 40 years’ worth of information to dissect and turn into ammunition.
According to Justice Democrats (the group that backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year), Joe Biden just doesn’t jibe with the modern Democratic Party.
“Joe Biden stands in near complete opposition to where the center of energy is in the Democratic Party today,” wrote the group on April 25th. “We don’t need someone who voted for the Iraq War, for mass incarceration, and for the Bankruptcy Reform Act, while voting against gay marriage, reproductive rights, and school desegregation.”
These claims are mostly true, but let’s take a closer look:
As a Catholic, Senator Biden supported a 1982 attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court decision that upheld a woman’s right to abortion). He voted against the same measure when it was presented in 1983.
By 2012, Joe had decided that women should be allowed to control their own bodies (but that the government shouldn’t help pay for it).
During the 1970’s, Biden opposed several bills that sought to increase racial diversity in schools – including efforts to use the bus system to achieve desegregation.
In 1988, Biden joined 86 Senators in approving the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The law provided funding for rehab programs, but it also imposed strict penalties for the possession of crack cocaine and marijuana.
This led to more arrests, especially for minorities.
In 1994, Biden joined 53 Democrats in supporting the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The law banned 19 types of semi-automatic weapons and added 100,000 officers to the nationwide police force, but it also imposed longer sentences and provided billions of dollars to construct more prisons.
Combined, the two crime packages added millions to the US prison population.
In 1996, Biden joined 84 Senators in approving a law which gave states the ability to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages. By 2012, Biden had changed his mind about gay rights: “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights.”
In October 2002, Biden joined 28 Democrats and 48 Republicans in authorizing the use of military force against Iraq.
In 2005, he voted in favor of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, a law which made it much harder for the average American to file for Chapter 7 protection.
More recent attacks on Biden include unwanted touching, his son’s activities in Ukraine, and his soft stance on China.
While Biden has never been accused of rape or sexual harassment, several women have complained about unwanted intimacy from a politician who likes to connect with others in a ‘hands-on’ sort of way. Biden’s apologies have been lackluster, and the accusations are likely to plague him throughout this presidential campaign.
Biden is also facing tough questions about his son Hunter’s involvement in a Ukrainian political corruption scandal.
As outlined in a New York Times report last week, Biden traveled to Kiev in March 2016 and “threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees” if the country failed to dismiss a corrupt prosecutor who at the time was investigating the energy company Burisma.
Since 2014, Biden’s son Hunter has earned up to $50,000 per month working for Burisma.
Biden claims he did not discuss his visit to Kiev with his son and Hunter insists he did not help shield Burisma from the investigation. “I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers,” said Hunter. “I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand globally.”
Hunter, who quit working for Burisma last month, has also been questioned about a $1 billion payment made to him by the Bank of China in 2013.
Speaking of China, Biden has been criticized from all sides over his claim that China is ‘not a threat’ to the United States.
“They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East, I mean in the West,” joked Biden Wednesday during a campaign stop in Iowa. “They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”
Excuse me?!
Just last Friday, FBI Director Christopher Wray described China as a “multilayered threat” to the United States.
China is a totalitarian nation of 1.4 billion that steals from the US, persecutes Christians, and imprisons Muslims. China is making aggressive moves in the South China Sea and is using the Belt and Road Initiative to expand its influence and foster debt dependency.
On top of that, China has plans to overcome the United States in technology and in military might — by stealing ours!!
And let’s not forget that China employs massive surveillance systems and censorship tactics to keep its population in the dark.
Nonetheless, Sleepy Joe thinks China is too busy ‘dealing with its own problems’ to cause us any harm. “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” he said.
Author’s Note: As we predicted, people have spent years collecting dirt on Biden in preparation for this moment. Joe will be brutally attacked by on all sides. He will either be destroyed by his enemies during the first primary or he will drop out of the race.