At last night's debate, Joe Biden was once again bragging about his bipartisan bona fides in a time where that's not a priority.
"Vice President Biden, it does sound as if you haven't seen what's been happening in the United States Senate over the last 12 years. it didn't happen. why?
"I have seen what happened. Just since we were vice president, we needed an $8 billion recovery act to keep us from going into the depression. I got three votes changed. We needed to be able to keep the government from shutting down and going bankrupt. I got Mitch McConnell to raise taxes $600 billion by raising the top rate. After the president got elected, I was able to put a coalition together that put billions of dollars the CURES Act that goes into cancer research, bipartisan. Sometimes you can't do that and you have to go out and beat them. I went to 20 states and 60 candidates and guess what? We beat them and we won back the senate.
That's when Michael Bennet handed Joe Biden his personal baggage.
"Sometimes you do have to beat them, but the deal that he talked about with Mitch McConnell was a complete victory for the Tea party. It extended the Bush tax cuts permanently, The Democratic party had been running against this for 10 years. We've lost that economic argument because that deal extended almost all those Bush tax cuts permanently and put in place the mindless cuts we still are dealing with today that are called the sequester. That was a great deal for Mitch McConnell, it was a terrible deal for America."
This is what I call Madrak's Law of Similarities, which came to me decades ago while singing in the shower. Here it is: You only hear the notes you make that sound just like the original song.
And you also only remember the moments in your political history that make you sound like a hero.
The candidates who continue to pound Joe Biden by reminding him of what really happened (cough *bankruptcy bill* cough) are going to change the race -- or at least the discussion. The longer Joe "Sir Lancelot" Biden pretends he's a knight in shining armor who doesn't have to change his ways because he was always perfect, the less likely he is to become the eventual nominee. He either rises to the occasion -- or he doesn't.
