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A former vice president made a rare public confession.
"I read today in the New York Times that one of my problems is that, if I ever ran for the presidency, I like Republicans," he said. said Joe Biden at a meeting of the Conference of Mayors of the United States. Then he made a brief pause before making the sign of the cross saying, "Well, bless me, father, for I have sinned."
Gathered in Washington, DC, from all over the country, the good -loved him. It was classic Biden.
And it is this kind of nonsense that attracted the vice-president in much of the country and could seduce voters if Biden decided to run for president in 2020. Retail politician and practicing Catholic, Biden has been perfecting this blue-collar-uncle character at the end-of-the-bar since Delaware first sent him to the Senate under the Nixon administration.
The Biden confession intervenes during the longest government shutdown in US history, when bipartisanship appears as a forgotten virtue. The base was a New York Times report insinuating that Biden helped a Republican, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, retain his seat.
Three weeks before the election, Biden traveled to Upton District. He delivered a speech at the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan. He received a right to speak for $ 200,000. He congratulated the Republican for helping to pass a law on medical research, called him a champion in the fight against cancer and said that Upton was "one of the best some of the best guys I've ever worked with. "
Biden offered no promotion. , a spokesman told the New York Times. Biden expressed sincere admiration for Upton's work after the death of Vice President Beau's son of cancer.
This would prove something of an unforgivable sin, especially after Upton's triumph over his Democratic challenger later in November. The Times reports that he has raised questions about his party's leadership and the fact that Biden would make an acceptable champion by 2020.
But for the Republicans, Biden was not really a political savior.
The Upton race was near, but not so close. The Republican beat the Democrats by more than 13,000 votes, four and a half percentage points. FiveThirtyEight ranked the district at R + 7.7, and voters voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016. A few words from Biden might have helped Upton in the last part. It is unlikely that this determined the race.
Biden is not likely to be revered by Republicans as a saint. His current bipartisan tone is very different from his old rhetoric. Not so long ago, Biden warned an overwhelmingly African-American crowd that the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, would "bring you back into chains." As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee before that, Biden had overseen Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas called "high-tech lynching".
Republicans will remember these episodes and will allay the gratitude they have for the help provided by Biden in Michigan. The voters of the GOP will see in his confession a nice opening bipartite.
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