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Biden didn't actually MEAN to say "no one's standard of living would change." If you ask him in a different context, he'll leap to say that poor and working people would be better off with him as president. But in that room, at that moment, poor and working people didn't exist.
When Biden brags about his ability to reach across the aisle, to forge convivial, easy, comfortable friendships with conservative Republicans, billionaires, white supremacists, this is what he's bragging about.
When you're willing to flatter those in power, when you're willing to reflect their worldview back at them, when you're willing to ignore the harm that they do and the harm they want to do, it's not hard to make friends.
Biden is arguing that being friends with your adversaries—refusing to contradict them, refusing to hold their wrongdoing against them, refusing to challenge their ideology face-to-face—makes it easier to defeat them. He's wrong.
And for every Biden story about his amicable friendship with Republicans, he's got another about his willingness to confront and challenge those who stand to his left.
If you're a white supremacist fossil, he'll wax poetic about the ease of your friendship. If you're a young anti-rape activist, he'll jab his finger in your face and tell you you're full of shit.
Civility, after all, can only go so far.
Update: Biden's people have told him to stop telling the Eastland story. He keeps telling it anyway. cnn.com/2019/06/19/pol…
