Back Themselves Into a Corner

Biden’s Foes Back Themselves Into a Corner

Tonight’s lesson: Taking on the front-runner can backfire. And for the Democratic Party, so can a big, unwieldy debate.

By JEFF GREENFIELD

For the Democrats coming after Joe Biden from the left—which is most of the 2020 presidential field—his half-century of public office was an obvious target of opportunity. Senator Kamala Harris sowed that seed last month by damning his closeness to segregationist senators 40 years ago. In Wednesday’s debate, Senator Cory Booker was tough in calling out Biden for sponsoring tough-on-crime laws in the Senate.

“There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that tough-on-crime phony rhetoric that got a lot of people elected but destroyed communities like mine,” Booker said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio began to paint Biden as a small-bore candidate in his opening statement: “Joe Biden told wealthy donors that nothing fundamentally would change if he were president.”

And Harris would bring more fire in the debate’s lengthy, sometimes staggeringly wonky health care section.

“Your plan does not cover everyone in America by your staff’s and your own definition,” she said. “Ten million people, as many as 10 million people will not have access to health care, and in 2019 in America, for a Democrat to be running for president with a plan that does not cover everyone, I think is without excuse.”

And a few of the candidates, Booker included, even dared to raise Biden’s enthusiastic embrace of former President Barack Obama. When Biden declined to say how he’d advised Obama about departing illegal immigrants, Booker said:

“First of all, you can’t have it both ways. You invoke president Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and dodge it when it’s not.”

But there were problems with this approach. First, Biden was significantly sharper than he was in June, prepared to spar with critics across the board. He was even confident enough to flash a bit of wit, answering another de Blasio blast by saying: “Well, I love your affection for me. You spend a lot of time with me.”

Second, Biden was prepared at times to directly push back at some of the common assertions of the progressive base of the party. He specifically refused to sign on to the decriminalization of border crossings. Responding to Senator Gillibrand’s account of her conversation with a would-be immigrant, Biden said:

“What the senator from New York talked about is seeking asylum. The women she spoke to are entitled to asylum. That is not crossing the border illegally….We’re in a circumstance where if you say you can just cross the border, what do you say to all of those people around the world who want the same thing... The fact of the matter is, you should be able to -- if you cross the border illegally, you should be able to be sent back. It’s a crime.”

For that, he was criticized for reciting “Republican talking points.” But to the Democrats who have been despairing that the 2020 cycle has become a long recitation of the progressive catechism, it was a welcome signal that, at least on some points, Biden was prepared to occupy the center ground.

Further, the debaters most eager to find vulnerability in his past positions began to find themselves under fire for the very same reason. When Booker critiqued Biden’s crime laws, the former vice-president cited Booker’s own time as Newark Mayor:

“In 2007,” Biden said, “you became mayor and you had a police department that you went out and hired Rudy Giuliani’s guy and you engaged in stop and frisk. You had 75 percent of those stops reviewed as illegal.”

As for Kamala Harris, in the end Biden didn’t even need to go after her: That job was done by Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who landed perhaps the toughest blows on Kamala Harris for her record as California Attorney General.

“I’m concerned about this record of senator Harris,” Gabbard said. “She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way... There’s no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor, you owe them an apology.”

The point is not that these candidates lack answers to their critics, or that Biden is without serious vulnerabilities. On issues ranging from his vote for the Iraq War to his recently abandoned support for the Hyde Amendment, Biden will face serious doubts from the energized base of his party. And apart from the nuts and bolt of the debate, the night gave Booker and Gabbard to show off their considerable chops.

With the attacks on Biden backfiring, and the lengthy debate at best a wash when it came to sorting out the top tier of candidates, two thoughts dominate:

First, Democrats have to pray that the field narrows dramatically before the fall, because a debate with ten candidates is a guaranteed disaster, even without CNN’s clownish gimmicks, diminishing the top candidates and playing to the stereotype of the current Democratic Party as a bunch of obscure characters trying to out-liberal each other.

Second, we are not going to get a real sense of how this campaign is going until Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are on the same stage. That’s the test the party needs to run.