Biden's Better Than Trump-- But Biden's The Worst Democrat Running Against Trump

I recall-- vividly-- Trump's flat-out lies about not accepting SuperPAC money. While he was doing everything he could to scrounge it up, he was making fun of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and all the other 2016 presidential candidates for being puppets of the Big Money donors. He was too, of course, but he swore up and down he was self-financing his campaign. He lied from day one; and he never stopped lying. He still hasn't. You noticed that right?

The other day, Status Quo Joe Biden, who would cut off a limb to get Obama's endorsement might have thought he was fooling someone when he claimed that he asked Obama not to endorse him. If that were true, Obama would be the only Democrat alive ever elected to office-- and office--who Biden hasn't asked!



But that isn't the only bullshit Biden was flinging during his first hours as an official candidate. Biden says he doesn't want any money raised for him by BidenPAC (which has now changed its name to either For The People PAC or G Street, depending where you look ). All the other credible Democratic candidates had already publicly rejected the idea of accepting money from lobbyists or from Super PACs during the primary. Biden quickly realized he had no choice but to follow along, at least with the Super PACs. (His first fundraiser was hosted by a Comcast lobbyist and the mansion was lousy with lobbyists, each of whom had given Biden a check.) Kate Bedingfield is Biden's Deputy Campaign Manager for Communications:

No one looks like a liar compared to Trump, of course, but take him out of the equation and Biden looks bad-- really bad. Branko Marcetic pointed out on Friday that for all his posturing about being the guy who fights for organized labor, "an episode from the not-so-distant past cuts against this 'friend of the working man' image: Biden's leading role in the Obama administration's 2011 efforts to slash the deficit by offering Republicans spending cuts to Medicare and Social Security-- the so-called Grand Bargain that, luckily for the country, was killed by Tea Party extremism and overreach.

Biden's always been a completely worthless piece of shit. A proud neoliberal, he was calling for a spending freeze on Social Security and a higher Social Security retirement age since the 1980s. He always embraced GOP bullshit about balancing the budget, something Republicans are only for while Democrats are in power. Biden's one of the morons who has always fallen for the trap and has always been the first Democrat in any circumstance to advocate raising the retirement age. The Joe Biden I remember has always been the guy who could not wait to screw working families with Austerity, which is just what anyone supporting his presidential race should be ready for if he wins. Sacrificing people dependent on Medicare and Social Security was something Biden seemed as enthusiastic about as Paul Ryan was.

The crappy deal Biden negotiated with the Republicans for the Obama administration "extended the Bush tax cuts, cut payroll taxes by $112 billion and met a host of other Republican demands: a lower estate tax with a higher exemption, new tax write-offs for businesses, and a maximum 15 percent capital gains tax rate locked in for two years. In return, unemployment insurance was extended for 13 months and the Opportunity Tax Credit for two years.

House Democrats were furious at both the estate tax provision and the Bush tax cut extension, partly because, according to Woodward, Biden had failed to mention the extension was on the table when he briefed Democratic leaders during the talks. Even conservative Democrats like House Whip Steny Hoyer had strongly opposed the extension, and the deal drew consternation from across the party. Dianne Feinstein balked at its size, and Bernie Sanders and two other senators interrupted Biden's presentation of the package. Sanders later vowed to “do everything I can to defeat this proposal,” including filibuster it. However, enough Democrats eventually capitulated, with some grumbling, for the deal to pass, overcoming an eight-hour filibuster by Sanders.

Biden subsequently led the debt negotiations with then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Sen. Jon Kyl and other Republicans. Biden's “opening bid” was cutting $4 trillion in spending over ten years, with a 3 to 1 proportion of cuts to revenue. Biden later proposed $2 trillion in cuts to general spending, federal retirement funds, Medicare and Medicaid, and, at Cantor's urging, food stamps.

At one point, Biden suddenly called for $200 billion more in cuts that had never been discussed, which, according to Woodward, led then-Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen-- also involved in the negotiations-- to believe Biden had gone over to the Cantor-Kyl side. Biden again crossed Van Hollen when he offered to take revenue-raising out of the “trigger”-- a combination of revenue raising and spending cuts meant to be equally unpalatable to both parties, which would automatically kick in if a deal failed to be reached.

Later in the negotiations, Biden dangled the possibility of Medicare cuts in return for more revenue-- meaning higher taxes. Soon after, he suggested Democrats might be comfortable raising the eligibility age for entitlements, imposing means testing and changing the consumer price index calculation, known as CPI. (Means testing is often seen a Trojan horse for chipping away at these programs, because their universality is one of the reasons they've remained virtually untouchable for almost a century. It’s also been criticized for imposing an unnecessary and discouraging layer of bureaucracy.)

At one point, Biden reportedly called the Medicare provider tax a “scam.” “For a moment, Biden sounded like a Republican,” Woodward notes. Biden’s team was forced to remind him that such a move would force states to cut services to the poor, to which he replied, “We're going to do lots of hard things,” and so “we might as well do this.”

As Woodward writes, “this was a huge deal” for Cantor (“Biden had caved”), and showed the administration had adopted the Republican view on the matter of the Medicare provider tax. Despite this giveaway, the Republicans continued their stubborn opposition to any revenue increases in the proposed deal.

The negotiations were ultimately scuttled by Cantor, after Biden inadvertently revealed to him that then-Speaker of the House John Boehner was secretly holding his own “grand bargain” talks with Obama. But the Biden portrayed in Woodward's book continued this pattern of bending over backwards to achieve the Republicans' cooperation in subsequent negotiations.

...[T]here are indications that another “grand bargain” may be in the cards should Biden win the presidency. In a speech last year at a joint event held by the Brookings Institution and the Biden Foundation, Biden said, “Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code. What’s the first thing he decided we needed to go after? Social Security and Medicare. We need to do something about Social Security and Medicare.” At the event, Biden suggested the programs should be means tested, and would require “adjustments.”

Biden’s willingness to go after the last remnants of the New Deal may well win him points from the political establishment, which has long treated such an approach as a mark of seriousness. Whether it wins him points among voters, who are overwhelmingly supportive of such programs, is another story altogether.