For a long time, President Joe Biden has been known as a “gaffe machine.” He is prone to say things that other politicians would not say and to make statements that regularly get him into trouble.
Yesterday, the gaffe machine produced its latest sound bite. During an interview with Latino supporters, the President reacted strongly to a comment made by a speaker at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.
“Just the other day,” Biden said, “a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters—his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” While there was some ambiguity about who Biden was referencing, Republicans instantly seized on the President’s intemperate and offensive remark and tried to use it to stoke Trump’s base.
As the New York Times reports, “Within minutes of the clip of Mr. Biden’s remarks going viral on social media on Tuesday night, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida addressed Mr. Trump’s rally in Allentown, Pa., and informed the crowd of Mr. Biden’s statement…. ‘Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage—are garbage.’”
“He’s talking about the Border Patrol,” Rubio claimed, “He’s talking about nurses. He’s talking about teachers. He’s talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President.”
The timing of Biden’s latest gaffe could not have been any more damaging to Vice President Harris’s campaign than if it had been scripted and orchestrated by Donald Trump himself. What Biden said undercut the message that Harris was delivering at almost the same moment in her speech in front of the White House.
During that event, which had been carefully scripted by her campaign who styled it her “closing argument,” Harris promised to bring the country together and make a seat at the table for those who oppose her.
“Unlike Donald Trump,” Harris argued, “I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table. It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms.”
Apparently Biden did not get the memo or, if he did, he couldn’t control himself.
But if Harris is bold and smart, she can turn Biden’s gaffe into campaign gold and also deliver an important civics lesson. She can do that by forcefully denouncing what Biden said and explaining that that is not the way that she sees the millions of Americans who have voted and will vote for Donald Trump.
Moreover, she can remind voters that in a democracy, all citizens, especially one‘s political opponents, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. Recognizing that is what leadership in a democracy requires.
Biden’s comments echo the kinds of things that politicians on both sides of the aisle have regularly said about their fellow Americans. For example, recall what Barack Obama said during his 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Talking about why voters in places troubled by job losses and economic despair, Obama disrespectfully claimed: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
In 2016, Hillary Clinton explained, “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables….” She then labeled them, “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
Not to be outdone in the contest to demonize and degrade Americans who are on the other side of the political divide, Donald Trump has called Democrats “communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
“They’ll do anything,” Trump notes, “whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
And now Biden’s garbage comment.
Political commentators have long noted the damage such comments do to democracy. They have documented the numerous ways they stir up resentments, fuel anger, and turn normal politics into a kind of religious warfare.
As the political scientist Eli Finkel reports, “Democrats and Republicans… have grown more contemptuous of opposing partisans for decades, and at similar rates. Only recently, however, has this aversion exceeded their affection for co-partisans…. Out-party hate has also become more powerful than in-party love as a predictor of voting behavior, and by some metrics, it exceeds long-standing antipathies around race and religion.”
Finkel warns of the rise of what he calls “political sectarianism.” Political sectarianism, he writes, “consists of three core ingredients: othering—the tendency to view opposing partisans as essentially different or alien to oneself; aversion—the tendency to dislike and distrust opposing partisans; and moralization—the tendency to view opposing partisans as iniquitous.”
“It is,” Finkel observes, “the confluence of these ingredients that makes sectarianism so corrosive in the political sphere.”
That is the context that makes what Biden said so destructive to democracy and so out of step with what Harris is trying to do. Throughout the campaign, Harris has had a “Biden problem.”
And she knows it. As the New York Times reported on Monday, “Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has backed away from President Biden in the final days of the 2024 election, viewing the unpopular incumbent as a liability in her quest to succeed him.”
The Times explains that “Harris campaign officials are holding him at arm’s length, in large part because the vice president is trying to present herself as a change candidate and cannot do that easily next to Mr. Biden. There is also wariness about what Mr. Biden will say or do when he is on the trail.”
Recall that Biden played right into Trump’s hands when he told supporters in New Hampshire, “’We got to lock him up,’ a reference to Mr. Trump.” While Biden later explained that he “meant the former president should be locked up ‘politically’ but the remarks ‘were not received well’ within the campaign.”
But after Biden’s foolish use of the word “garbage” to describe Trump supporters, arm’s length is not enough.
Harris needs to clearly and forcefully denounce Biden’s comments. This is what she has said so far: “Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
Good, but not good enough, especially when Harris backpedaled , noting that Biden had “clarified his comments.”
The Vice President needs to call out Biden by name and say how destructive of the democratic project it is to call someone “garbage.” She should say that no matter who Biden now says he was referencing, there is no excuse for using such language especially from the person who sits in the Oval Office.
If she does so, this could be her Sister Souljah moment. Named after a time during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign when he denounced the radical activist, it refers to a public repudiation of an extreme person or reprehensible statement
Denouncing what Biden said on Tuesday night will not only be good for her campaign, it will be good for the democracy she hopes to lead.
