President Joe Biden called out Republicans in Congress as “the party of chaos and division” and said they are “worse” than Strom Thurmond, a former South Carolina senator who ran for president as a segregationist in 1948.
“I’ve been a senator since ‘72. I’ve served with real racists. I’ve served with Strom Thurmond. I’ve served with all these guys that have set terrible records on race. But guess what? These guys are worse. These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles,” Biden said at a fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, according to the pool traveling with him. “Time and again Republicans show they are the party of chaos and division.”
Biden’s comments come as Republicans in Congress are holding still a foreign aid package that would send aid to Ukraine and Israel. The $95.3 billion foreign aid bill, which was passed by the Senate last week, still faces a showdown in the House as House Speaker Mike Johnson has told his House Republican Conference members that he is not rushing to respond to the bill.
You’ve completely missed the point. This isn’t a situation where a negative claim is made by an opponent and then you get a chance to respond. The problem is that Joe Biden’s negatives are being injected into people’s minds, not by his enemies, but by Biden himself. You won’t have an opportunity to spin it, and any benefits from calling the Republicans anti-democratic chaos agents is muddied by simultaneously raising the salience of things they should prefer to be forgotten.
And spin can try to blunt damage, but it never completely neutralizes it. You want to be doing damage control as rarely as possible, because every time you’re doing it you’ve lost something.
This kid is 13 years old and wants to criticize Biden no matter what he says. And… He’s the youth vote which Biden really doesn’t have to worry about much. 1 they don’t vote and 2 the ones that do vote Dem.
You people really just don’t get how bad this sort of engagement is for promoting Democratic causes do you? I guarantee you, the people actually working to get Biden elected do not approach politics like this.
Do you not understand that your reading of the message isn’t entirely correct or what a majority of people will think?
Neither is any damaging statement. Trump says dumb shit all the time that his sycophants just ignore, that doesn’t mean you want to be doing damage control for the gettable voters who you’re turning off by reminding them of your weaknesses.
Do you not understand that some voters do hear “I was in the Senate in 1972” and think “man, you’re old”? Or that some people might be uncomfortable about a statement that says “the hardcore racists weren’t as bad as anti-democratic chaos agents”? Or would rather forget that Biden supported some racist stuff in the past? People have lost family members to the crime bill and his anti-bussing stance was the most effective attack on him during the primary. These aren’t made up issues and this Democratic instinct to say “actually there are no negatives, and if something made you feel less good about Biden you’re wrong” isn’t an effective way to influence politics. Spin isn’t a cure-all remedy and carries meaningful risk of sounding insincere or out of touch.