Sen. Joe Biden (D-MBNA) -- Why's he's no friend of the working class and why the GOP can't use it against him
Biden and the crediit card companiies
My guestimate was that it would take about 48 hours for this story to come out. And here it is, right on schedule:
In other words, when Biden gets up there and talks poignantly about the typical American family sitting around the kitchen table late at night worrying how to pay its bills, and then twists the dagger on John McCain's seven kitchen tables, it's a great line politically. but....
It's a total crock, and Biden ought to be embarassed. The sad truth is that Biden not only supported but aggressively pushed for a conservative, anti-working class bill that made life a lot harder for that family that he talked about. Here's a little of the background:
And:
Making this even worse, as the story emphasizes, is that Biden's son Hunter was signed up by the company in a lucrative lobbying deal. On the surface, that really stinks -- but watching these things unfold over the years, I predict that Hunter Biden is probably just another candidate for the Sleazy Relatives Hall of Fame, a long list that includes neer-do-wells in both parties like Roger Clinton, Neil Bush, Billy Carter and Donald Nixon, and these usually only cause minor collatoral damage.
Of course, Delaware is also the credit-card capital of the world, and so you can make the case that this is another example of another fine political tradition -- supporting the big-money interests (and, yes, employers) in your home state over the broader interest of people in all 50 states. That was arguably sort-of OK, maybe, when Biden was just a Delaware guy, but now he's got to explain his bankruptcy vote to families around the kitchen table in places like the hard-hit Mon Valley or California's Central Valley. Good luck with that.
So why would Obama go ahead and pick someone with this kind of baggage? The answer is simple: The Republicans can't attack Biden on this issue, because their record is even worse. John McCain voted for this same sad sop to corporate America (Obama opposed it) and as the Times article notes, executives at MBNA (which has since been bought by Bank of America) were even more enthusiastic about supporting George W. Bush than backing Biden.
Can you imagine a negative ad with satanic music, grainy slow motion shots of Biden, and a narrator saying: "Joe Biden: Sleazy Tool of the Same Corporate Interests That We Support 100 Percent of the Time"? Of course not -- they can't attack Biden for backing something that McCain and Bush also supported. It just means that now Obama, who was on the people's side on this one, now won't be able to hit this issue as hard as he could.
No wonder the greatest enthusiam for Biden is not from party activists but from the usual chattering classes in D.C. As Glenn Greenwald wrote:
The bottom line is that Biden's shameless kowtowing to the credit card companies won't hurt him or Barack Obama. The only ones getting hurt are you and me, and that poor struggling family at the kitchen table.