Sleepy Joe Biden finally got woke this weekend and apologized for uttering a kind word about the “segregationists” with whom he broke bread during his green years in the Senate, lest anyone think he support segregation.
Biden unbosomed his apology in South Carolina after having a week to think about the attack from fellow presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris, who, while denying that Biden was a racist, implicitly suggested that he was, indeed, a racist. That’s because Biden not only worked with “segregationists,” but also worked with them to stop federally-mandated busing.
It’s unlikely that Biden is a racist, despite gaffes that would end the career of any Republican, and in any event, as The New American reported last week, he still leads in competitors in the race for the Democratic nomination by a comfortable margin.
Biden and the “Segregationists”
The trouble for Biden really began in April, when CNN reminded everyone of the warm letters he wrote to Mississippi Democrat James O. Eastland, one of which sought support for his bill to stop busing.
“My bill strikes at the heart of the Injustice of court-ordered busing,” a much-younger Biden wrote. “It prohibits the federal courts from disrupting our educational system in the name of the Constitution where there is no evidence that the government officials intended to discriminate.”
After that, the Gaffe-meister General praised Eastland and Herman Talmadge of Georgia: “At least there was some civility,” he said of his days working with the two Southeners. “We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
That gave Harris an opening to attack Biden in the second Democratic debate on June 27. Falsely suggesting that she was the victim of discrimination in her tender years because she was a poor black girl, Harris went after Biden:
It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.
And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.
Harris’ mother was an Indian cancer scientist, and her father was a Jamaican economics professor at Stanford University, so her tale of woe isn’t quite as woeful as she would have gullible Democrats believe.
I’m Sorry, So Sorry.
Nonetheless, hoping that an old white guy can still win the nomination in an increasingly “diverse” party, Biden began the ritual groveling on Saturday during a campaign stop in the Palmetto State, the Associated Press reported. Speaking to a “mostly black audience,” Biden asked whether he was “wrong a few weeks ago?”
Well “yes, I was,” he admitted. “I regret it, and I’m sorry for any of the pain of misconception that caused anybody.”
Biden added that his record can “stand for itself,” that he won’t permit it to be “distorted or smeared.”
Said the man who helped smear U.S. Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, “I’m flawed and imperfect like everyone else. I’ve made the best decisions that I could at the moment they had to be made.”
One of those recent decisions, as TNA has reported, is allowing the left the rewrite the history of his decisions during Thomas’ hearings to assert that Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sex harassment, did not receive a proper or respectful hearing. That is false.
For her part, Harris claims the federal government must continue forced busing:
I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school. And we need to put every effort, including busing, into play to de-segregate the schools…. The federal government has a role and a responsibility to step up.
She repeated that message in New Orleans on Saturday, AP reported.
“There’s still mandatory busing that exists today,” the candidate said. “Because we had so much flight. … Segregation persists now not necessarily as a function of legislator[s]. … But just because there has been a drawing out of the resources in public schools. That is one of my highest priorities, and we have got to deal with that.”
Harris’ attack on Biden apparently helped her with Democrat voters. She vaulted over competitors Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the polls to second behind Biden, who leads her 26-15.2 percent.
Photo: AP Images