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Pierce writes: "But Julian Castro was right."

Joe Biden. (photo: Heidi Gutman/Getty Images)
Joe Biden. (photo: Heidi Gutman/Getty Images)


It Is Possible That Joe Biden Got Trapped in His Own Incoherence

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

13 September 19

 

nyone who thinks you can retrain thousands of truck drivers," Andrew Yang said, as an exaltation of cameras and boom microphones descended on him, "hasn't been at a truck stop lately. That's why I'm so passionate about the freedom dividends." Ever since the campaign began, the millionaire businessman and former corporate trainer has been trying to buy my vote for $1,000 a month, his so-called "freedom dividend" that is a critical part of his long-shot campaign. On Thursday night, as the third Democratic debate kicked off, Yang upped his offer with an even more inventive twist.

That’s why I’m going to do something unprecedented tonight. My campaign will now give a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month for an entire year to 10 American families, someone watching this at home right now. If you believe that you can solve your own problems better than any politician, go to yang2020.com and tell us how $1,000 a month will help you do just that. This is how we will get our country working for us again, the American people.

Essentially, Yang proposed to turn his campaign funds into a kind of pilot program for his freedom dividends. The campaign would choose 1o families and award them the $1,000 monthly stipend on the theory that they will spend the campaign funds more wisely than his campaign will, which is not an unreasonable thing. All of this, of course, is a variation on the concept of the Universal Basic Income, an idea that has seen its time come 'round again. But the difference is that Yang now seems to be running as the PowerBall candidate. If he doesn't hand the first one out on live television, this whole campaign is a waste.

Is this legal? Who the hell knows at this point? The campaign-finance laws are in ruins, and the Federal Election Commission is an empty shell. From The New York Times:

Campaign finance experts said that while federal rules prohibit campaigns from giving people anything of value as an incentive to vote, Mr. Yang would not be breaking the law in that area if he did not ask for people’s votes in return. But Federal Election Commission rules do prohibit the use of campaign funds on personal expenses. To differentiate legitimate campaign expenses from personal expenses, regulators must determine whether the expense would exist even if the candidate were not running for office.

That UBI is back in the debate is unquestionably a good thing, although Yang's proposal does seem to indicate that his freedom dividends also would be seen as a replacement for existing benefits, which would be disastrous, and which reeks of tech-bro "disruption" for disruption's sake.

Nevertheless, it livened up the beginning of the debate considerably. Otherwise, I would be willing to bet something quite substantial that Thursday night's hootenanny changed not a single vote. Most of the candidates were solid; Beto O'Rourke and Kamala Harris both had their best debates of the cycle. Senator Professor Warren had her best moment on what is supposed to be the weakest part of her candidacy: foreign policy. David Muir of ABC asked her if she would withdraw American forces from Afghanistan even without having reached an agreement with the Taliban. She responded:

Yes. And I'll tell you why. What we're doing right now in Afghanistan is not helping the safety and security of the United States. It is not helping the safety and security of the world. It is not helping the safety and security of Afghanistan. We need to bring our troops home. And then we need to make a big shift. We cannot ask our military to keep solving problems that cannot be solved militarily. We're not going to bomb our way to a solution in Afghanistan.

We need to treat the problem of terrorism as a worldwide problem, and that means we need to be working with all of our allies, our European allies, our Canadian allies, our Asian allies, our allies in Africa and in South America. We need to work together to root out terrorism. It means using all of our tools. It means economic investment. It means expanding our diplomatic efforts instead of hollowing out the State Department and deliberately making it so we have no eyes and ears in many of these countries. We need a foreign policy that is about our security and about leading on our values.

And when Muir followed up by asking what she would do if the military brass told her that this policy was unwise, she didn't back down a step.

I was in Afghanistan with John McCain two years ago this past summer. I think it may have been Senator McCain's last trip before he was sick. And I talked to people -- we did -- we talked to military leaders, American and local leaders, we talked to people on the ground and asked the question, the same one I ask on the Senate Armed Services Committee every time one of the generals comes through: Show me what winning looks like. Tell me what it looks like. And what you hear is a lot of, "Uh," because no one can describe it. And the reason no one can describe it is because the problems in Afghanistan are not problems that can be solved by a military.

Otherwise, the debate's most compelling subtext was its concern over how exactly to handle the legacy of Barack Obama. This was vividly on display in the now-famous interplay between Joe Biden and Julian Castro. Most of the post-debate discussion concerned Castro's pointing out that, over a couple of minutes, Biden contradicted himself on his own healthcare plan:

“Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you said two minutes ago? I mean, I can’t believe you said two minutes ago that they had to buy in and now you’re saying that they don’t have to, I mean you’re forgetting that.”

Castro was roundly criticized afterwards for being mean to good old Joe Biden, but the most signifying moment came at the end of the interchange, when Castro, who determined that he was going to latch onto Biden's saphenous vein on this issue and not let go until Columbus Day, said:

It automatically enrolls people regardless of whether they choose to opt in or not. If you lose your job, for instance, his health care plan would not automatically enroll you. You would have to opt in. My health care plan would. That's a big difference. I'm fulfilling the legacy of Barack Obama, and you're not.

Castro, of course, served in Obama's cabinet. Boy, the 25th Obama Administration reunion is going to be a great deal of fun.

As to the more famous part of the exchange, and despite Pete Buttigieg's dismay that an actual policy argument broke out in the middle of a debate, Castro was correct. Biden did run over his own foot. First, after attacking Medicare For All as pie in the sky, Biden said:

"Fifteen seconds. Look, everybody says we want an option. The option I'm proposing is Medicare-for-all — Medicare for choice. If you want Medicare, if you lose the job from your insurance — from your employer, you automatically can buy into this. You don't have — no pre-existing condition can stop you from buying in. You get covered, period."

When his turn came, Castro pounced:

If they choose to hold on to strong, solid private health insurance, I believe they should be able to do. But the difference between what I support and what you support, Vice President Biden, is that you require them to opt in and I would not require them to opt in. They would automatically be enrolled. They wouldn't have a buy in. That's a big difference, because Barack Obama's vision was not to leave 10 million people uncovered. He wanted every single person in this country covered. My plan would do that. Your plan would not.

And then:

BIDEN: They do not have to buy in. They do not have to buy in.

CASTRO: You just said that. You just said that two minutes ago. You just two minutes ago that they would have to buy in.

BIDEN: Do not have to buy in if you can't afford it.

CASTRO: You said they would have to buy in.

BIDEN: Your grandmother would not have to buy in. If she qualifies for Medicaid, she would automatically be enrolled.

CASTRO: Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago? I mean, I can't believe that you said two minutes ago that they had to buy in and now you're saying they don't have to buy in. You're forgetting that.

It is possible—maybe even likely—that Biden got trapped here in his own incoherence, about which more anon. But the fact is that Castro was right and Biden was wrong about Biden's own healthcare policy. That he may also have tossed an elbow in Biden's direction is interesting, but it's less important. In addition, later in the debate, Castro again called out Biden for using his vice presidency as a convenient invisibility cloak whenever the debate turns against him.

And, look, I agree that Barack Obama was very different from Donald Trump. Donald Trump has a dark heart when it comes to immigrants. He built his whole political career so far on scapegoating and fearmongering and otherizing migrants, and that's very different from Barack Obama. But my problem with Vice President Biden — and Cory pointed this out last time — is every time something good about Barack Obama comes up, he says, oh, I was there, I was there, I was there, that's me, too, and then every time somebody questions part of the administration that we were both part of, he says, well, that was the president. I mean, he wants to take credit for Obama's work, but not have to answer to any questions.

"I know that people often think it's about personalities, or you're going after a particular candidate," Congressman Joaquin Castro said after the debate was over. "Really, it's not—my brother is standing up for the issues he believes in. President Obama was a transformative president and I think all of us believe that. But, as I've said before, no president, even the presidents we love, are deities. If we make that the case, then we can never look back and say, 'We should've done something differently.'"

And what Julian Castro said was, once again, correct. Biden does use his service as vice president in just that way, and he'd be a fool not to do so. He's also campaigning for a return to normalcy, and he'd be a fool not to do that, either. But part of a return to normalcy in our present context is a return to a president who a) knows what he's talking about, and b) can express those thoughts in a way that doesn't seem as though he learned English 20 minutes before he took the stage. (On Thursday afternoon, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had another one of his public episodes at a Republican Party retreat.) If that is the Biden campaign's goal, then answers like the one he gave in the middle of a discussion of education policy do not, ah, further that argument very much.

Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need — we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are — I'm married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have — make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School. We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It's not want they don't want to help. They don't — they don't know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the — the — make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

You can hear almost anything you want to hear in that answer, and that's a very serious problem. (And, no, I don't believe the reference to a "record player" is Biden's acknowledgement that vinyl is making a comeback. I mean, really, people. Come on.) You can hear that Biden is criticizing poor families for their child-rearing skills. Or you can hear someone who genuinely knows the myriad social problems that affect learning in impoverished communities. But in neither case can you be absolutely sure that's what you actually heard. And that's not because Biden was being slippery.

It's because he was being as utterly incoherent as the current president* was earlier that afternoon. He's got to get a grip on this or, if and when he's the nominee, any debates Joe Biden has with the incumbent is going to require English subtitles and, perhaps, consecutive translation.

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