I Know Joe Biden. Joe Biden Is No Elizabeth Warren

Only one of these Democrats could ever be a credible populist alternative to Hillary

The headlines over the weekend about Biden's fundraiser in Columbia, South Carolina was about him taking a shot at "The Clintons."

In recent months, the vice president has focused on revving up liberals on issues of income inequality, as he prepares for a possible run against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though many Democrats don't think he'd run against her.

Biden did not mention his own presidential ambitions Friday, but multiple sources described his speech as "populist" and high-energy, according to CNN. One attendee said it was an "Elizabeth Warren-type speech" blasting income inequality.

That attendee probably hasn't read Elizabeth Warren's iconic new book yet, A Fighting Chance. Lately, Biden has been trying to take on the role of populist. Biden, the former chief shill of the credit card industry and a much-loved darling of corporate plutocracy. Biden, the guy who takes Amtrak, wasn't invented yesterday. He has a long record-- a long, sordid record-- as the senator from Delaware, where he was pretty much always on the wrong side of the battle for the middle class. Easy for him to take a cheap shot at "The Clintons," but anyone who remembers his record in the Senate sees right through it.

In Columbia, he was speaking primarily with wealthy elites, not grassroots Democrats, but he was playing his unlikely role as populist-Joe.

Biden touted the Obama administration’s record on the economy, multiple Democrats in the room told CNN, but he also painted a picture of a middle class still struggling while the nation’s top earners continue to line their pockets.

“He said we have some of the most productive workers in the world, but corporations are more concerned about their stockholders than they are about their employees,” said one prominent Democrat who attended the fundraiser but did not want to be identified discussing a private event. “He talked about how the fruits of labor go to stockholders, rather than to the people who are producing it. That the people making the money in this country are the corporations.”

Another Democrat in the room said the vice president “talked about how the system was rigged against the middle class. He said the economic realities of the middle class are diminishing, and that the average middle-class family is finding it hard to make it economically.”

Biden did not mention his own White House ambitions. But several Democrats at the event were struck by one remark he made about Bill Clinton’s presidency: Three sources there told CNN that Biden said the fraying of middle-class economic security did not begin during President George W. Bush’s terms, but earlier, in the “later years of the Clinton administration.” Biden, of course, could face off against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 if they both decide to run.

Biden’s speech was described, to a person, as “populist.”

“He gave a stem-winding, almost revival-type speech today,” one Democrat said of the vice president. “I have never seen him this good. He was on fire. Sometimes when Joe gives a speech that goes on for 30 minutes, people are kind of drifting off or looking at their watches. But he was more enthused, more passionate. He was a preacher delivering a sermon.”

Warren's let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may telling of her actual real life struggles on behalf of hard-pressed middle class families paints a pretty unattractive picture of Jeb Hensarling, who served under her when she was chair of COP-- the congressional oversight panel for TARP. But before we take a look at what Warren had to say about Biden's role in wealth transfer from the middle class to his campaign donors in the 1%, these are some of the observations here at DWT about ten years ago, when he first thought he could be president. Always part of the Bayh-Lieberman posse, he was widely considered a pompous windbag and wretched careerist whore. "Joe Biden," I titled a post at the time, "epitomizes everything that is wrong with the Inside-the-Beltway mentality. He's worse than a Republican." At the time I was poking fun at Biden's play acting in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of fellow corporate whore John Roberts. Biden was playing the role of "partisan" and populist. Unfortunately, was only role-playing and he was as phony and two-faced and insincere as someone can be. Matt Drudge reported that Biden was overheard ingratiating himself with the future Chief Justice, saying "You're the best I've ever seen before the committee."

The next day, the Boston Globe bought Biden's pose, hook, line and sinker, or at least Nina Easton did. "It was a week of political dejà vu, as Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, prospective Democratic presidential nominee, emerged as the most animated inquisitor of Supreme Court nominee Judge John G. Roberts Jr. Biden seemed to be using the hearings to jump-start a presidential run, just as he used the 1987 hearings into Robert Bork's nomination to prepare for his 1988 run, which abruptly ended after he was accused of cribbing a speech from a British Labor Party politician... The Delaware senator's machine-gun style questioning on Tuesday prompted the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, to intervene repeatedly so Roberts could finish his answers. Yesterday, Biden grilled Roberts on his views of end-of-life issues, such as the Terri Schiavo case, before throwing up his hands with this pointed declaration: 'We are rolling the dice with you, judge.'"

In her new book, Warren recounts the difficulty she and other actual progressives had in stopping the banksters from passing the horrendous bankruptcy bill that was written by the credit card companies as a specifically abusive measure against working families. Biden wasn't playing the "populist" then; he was playing the loyal supplicant looking for Wall Street backers for his political ambitions. After Hillary Clinton urged Bill to veto the bankruptcy bill-- and he did-- Warren wrote that "The banks lost in 2000 but they didn't quit-- they just spent more money on lobbying and campaign contributions."

Soon the banking industry was outspending everybody else-- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, even Big Oil. Credit card companies lined up to boost George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

In 2001, the bill looked sure to pass Congress again, and now George W. Bush was in the White House, promising to sign it into law. The recent election kept the House in Republican control, and every single Republican was ready to support the bill. The Senate was evenly split between two parties but one of the bill's lead sponsors was Democratic power-house Joe Biden, and right behind him were plenty of other Democrats offering to help.

The bill did pass, 74-25 in the Senate on Maech 10, 2005. 25 Democrats-- including Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, Ron Wyden and then-Senator Barack Obama-- voted against it. But Biden led a toxic coalition of Democratic anti-family corporate whores like Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Mary Landieu, Blanche Lincoln, the Nelson twins, Mark Pryor, across the aisle to vote with the Republicans… and Wall Street.