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"If we bring down a great political party that should not be blamed for what happened, we begin to bring down the system. ... And I for one don't have anything better to replace it with." —Joe Biden on the GOP in 1973, at the height of Watergate.
In the same speech, delivered in May 1973, Biden said "although my Democratic colleagues won’t like me saying this, I think the two party system is good for the South, and good for the Negro and good for the black in the South." cleveland.com/politics/2019/…
Listening to the whole speech now. Two minutes in, Biden joked, pointing out a woman who arrived late: "This young lady knows I'm so powerful, she wants to get close to me. She just moved right up front here." cityclub.org/inc/audio-play…
Biden tells a joke about a Senate elevator operator who didn't realize Biden was a senator, and was disbelieving when told. Punchline: "Well, I'm happy to announce today that he's been fired."
Biden on Watergate, May 1973: "It should be made clear, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: This is not a Republican affair. This is not the Republican party's doing." Wow.
More Biden on Watergate, 1973: "With one possible exception, not a single person involved in this scandal is a politician. Not one. Not one of them has ever run for as much as dogcatcher. And I think that's a very important distinction to make."
Biden calls the Watergate scandal the work of "a bunch of administrative bureaucrats."
More Biden: "Just as it would be wrong in my opinion to try to lay the blame for Watergate on the backs of the Republican Party, it is wrong to blame politicians, those of us who hold elective office, for the responsibility for this scandal."
Biden, speaking in Ohio, says Ohio's GOP senators "are absolutely truly appalled at what's happening." Says for Dems "to try to hang the yoke of Watergate on either of those two honorable men is not only morally wrong, but it's stupid."
Biden says he was recently at a Democratic fundraising dinner and when the other speakers, local candidates, started trashing the GOP over Watergate he abandoned his prepared speech "and got up and gave a 20-minute tirade ... devoted to the virtues of the Republican Party."
He's coming up on 20 minutes in this speech talking about Watergate, and exonerating the GOP of responsibility for it has been his entire theme.
(We've only now reached the point of the speech that's excerpted in the clip at the top of the thread.)
Biden says that as a politician "I take great offense ... I resent it" when people refer to politicans as crooks because of Watergate.
Biden says "the classic definition of politics ... the whole reason for our system of government" is "to temper power." A somewhat curious definition of the political project.
About five times now, Biden has prefaced something he says by predicting it'll be unpopular. It's a constant recurring tic in his speech, and delivered with a self-congratulatory flourish every time.
"Let me finish with one thing that's going to be very unpopular, more unpopular than anything I've said: Nothing is politically right that is morally wrong."
Long digressive discussion about campaign financing now. Not sure where exactly he's going with it.
(Federal funding of elections.)
Speech is over. There's about 20 minutes of Q&A coming.
(Again, for those coming in to the thread late, this is a recording of a May 1973 speech Joe Biden, first-term senator, gave on the subject of Watergate.)
Unprompted, Biden calls the Johnson administration "just as secretive, and just as uncooperative" with Congress as the Nixon administration.
First female questioner: "Senator, I find you very articulate..."
Biden, interrupting: "I find you very lovely. Come down up front."
Biden, interrupting: "I find you very lovely. Come down up front."
Biden, after calling Watergate the worst abuse of power in US history: "Let me say for the record, clearly, CLEARLY, Democrats are as immoral as Republicans and maybe in big cities a good deal more immoral."
Biden calls on second female questioner: "She's better looking than you, judge. We'll go to her first."
Biden on Nixon, May 1973: "As much as I'm not fond of him, I think we've got to say that he is innocent until he is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty. We cannot commit the same sins that some of his followers have committed in the past."
That's the last question. Fascinating speech. Audio here: cityclub.org/inc/audio-play…
Some folks have suggested it's unfair for me to criticize a 1973 speech, but what's fascinating about it are the continuities with Biden's public persona today. It's interesting precisely because it's so consistent with who he is now.
And if what Biden is saying about the Trump GOP in 2019 is so similar to what Biden was saying about the Nixon GOP in 1973, that gives us real insight into what he'd be likely to say in the general election, and do as president.
And yes, two women rose to ask questions at that event, and Biden made sexually suggestive remarks to both of them. He likes to say "times have changed," but what he did in 1973 wasn't okay in 1973, either.
Biden was given an opportunity earlier this year to reflect on his past behavior with women and reassess it. If he'd done so, a lot of people would have been eager to hear it. He emphatically rejected that path.
Likewise, the Trump scandals present Biden with an opportunity to revisit and revise what he said about the Republican Party and presidential scandals in 1973. Instead, he's offering the same analysis—in a time when there's even less justification for it.
Bernie, Warren, Harris, Beto—whether you find them compelling (or sincere) or not, all of them have, in one way or another, wrestled with big things they've said and done in the past that they now say they regret. That's not Biden.
The narrative of Biden's 2020 campaign isn't one of the candidate's personal growth and change over time. It's one of consistency and continuity. And that's an organic and sincere narrative—it's what he believes. It's how he understands himself.
Biden is who he is. He is who he's always been. That's what he'll tell you, and it's pretty much the truth.
Just a couple of things on this thread, specifically the descriptions of Biden's interactions with women.
As I said when I posted the original tweets, I think they're relevant to who Biden is today. I think it's all relevant—the gender stuff, the Watergate stuff, the praising-Republicans-and-tearing-down-partisan-Democrats stuff.
I tried throughout the thread to make it clear as often as possible that I was "livetweeting" a 46-year-old speech, while still maintaining some semblance of readability.
Unfortunately, only one of the three tweets describing Biden's interactions with women during the speech and Q&A wound up with that kind of date stamp. That's just the way it shook out.
I think it's pretty obvious that there was no intent to deceive, and it honestly didn't occur to me that those tweets might go semi-viral in isolation from the rest of the thread.
But yeah, they semi-did, and if I had it to do over I would have written them slightly differently. Twitter is weird, and we're all still learning how to use it.
(I've done this kind of "livetweeting" a bunch of times in the past, btw, and nothing like this has ever happened before. We live and learn.)
Oh, and here's something interesting: I just checked, and more than half of the people who read those tweets (a lot more, in one case) seem to have done so in the course of reading the thread. So it turns out that they didn't jump the tracks quite as badly as I feared.
