Biden said that Warren gave him hell. They will now debate together for the first time.



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"Their experiences, their attitudes are very different," said Mike Lux, deputy national policy director at Biden's presidential campaign in 1988, before working with Warren. "Elizabeth has risen through the ranks of the progressive movement and Biden came to town a long time ago and is an integral part of the old Senate school."

Their differences go beyond the fight against the bankruptcy bill. In 2016, Warren was one of the few senators to vote against a health care bill, which included the funding of a "moonshot" cancer initiative, named after the government. Honor Biden's son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015. Biden called for a vote to go forward. with the bill on which he presided "perhaps one of the most important moments of my career."

Despite their history, Biden's campaign played down the expectations of a potential confrontation with Warren.

"As Joe Biden said, he has a deep respect for Elizabeth Warren," said Andrew Bates, spokesman for the Biden campaign, in a statement to POLITICO. "His campaign is not meant to compete with other candidates, but to demonstrate that he has an unprecedented track record of incremental change and that he is the best person to defeat Donald Trump and the atrocious values ​​that he has." It represents. "

Warren's campaign declined to comment.

But the two candidates have been subtly stung in recent days. Biden's campaign implicitly accused Warren of not attracting as much support from colored voters, while Warren last week rebuked Democrats who wanted to "go back" and "make changes gradually."

They also have clear differences on policy issues. Warren supports Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" proposal, while Biden has called for adding a public option to Obamacare – an issue that may be raised during the debate. Warren also called for the dissolution of Facebook and other big tech companies, which Biden did not enact, and the repeal of most of the 1994 crime law, which Biden helped write.

Warren described the fight against the bankruptcy bill as a formative political experiment.

Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who served on Warren's National Bankruptcy Commission in the 1990s, said "the need to protect her constituency may have been a hindrance to his ability to hear reality ".

Biden defended his vote for the bill, passed in 2005, as a way to ensure consumer protection in a bill that could be passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, anyway.

But he does not seem to have grieved against Warren for his criticism of him.

The next time they saw each other, Biden "stretched out his arms and shouted from the other side of the room:" Professor! Come here and give me a hug! Warren recalls in the Senate in 2016.

"He had not forgotten our previous battle, but he made it clear that he kept thinking and rethinking the problems of working families and that even in the event of disagreement we could respect each other and even we love, "she said. Biden had "provided time and again encouragement, wisdom and good advice".

As Vice President, Biden supported Obama's decision to appoint Warren to the position of aide to the presidency to help set up the Office of Consumer Financial Protection, Terrell McSweeny said. , then Biden's domestic policy advisor, during an interview.

Warren also advised the working group on middle class administration, led by Biden, and wrote a post for his blog, describing how the new agency would help families.

"I never remember that he has anything but respect for her," McSweeny said.

After Biden was sworn in to Warren's oath in 2013, he brought her closer to him. "You made me hell," Biden told him, apparently referring to the bankruptcy bill, while Warren and her husband, Bruce Mann, laughed, according to C-SPAN images.

Biden even considered Warren a potential vice president in 2015, when he ran as a candidate for the presidency. Warren had told her at the time that she thought her past positions on issues such as bankruptcy would make it more difficult to run to the left of Hillary Clinton in the primary.

Warren and Biden again disagreed in the final days of the Obama administration, while Biden was working to lead a health care bill called the 21st Century Treatment Act. through the Congress. Warren said the bill contained too many gifts for the pharmaceutical industry.

"When American voters say that Congress belongs to big business, this bill is exactly what they are talking about," she said in a speech to the Senate.

She accused Republicans of holding funds to finance the opioid crisis and Biden's cancer initiative "a hostage unless everyone accepts special favors for donors of the campaign and gifts to the world's richest pharmaceutical companies. " She was one of five senators to vote against the bill. , alongside Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sanders.

Although it is not certain that Warren is attacking Biden during the debate, she suggested during the campaign that she was not afraid to talk about their old disagreements.

"At a time when the country's largest financial institutions were trying to silence millions of working and bankrupt families because of medical problems, job losses, divorces and deaths in their families, no one could defend them. Warren told reporters in April. "I fought because they did not have anyone. And Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies. "

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