The Daily - The Candidates: Joe Biden

He built a career, and a presidential campaign, on a belief in bipartisanship. Now, critics of the candidate ask: Is political consensus a dangerous compromise? In Part 4 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we examine the long Senate career, and legislative legacy, of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Guest: Astead W. Herndon, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Mr. Biden now plays down his role overhauling crime laws with segregationist senators in the 1980s and ’90s. In an investigation, our reporter found that the portrayal is at odds with his actions and rhetoric back then.The former vice president and current Democratic front-runner wants to unite the country in a divisive time. Here’s more on what Mr. Biden stands for.This Supreme Court battle explains why Mr. Biden firmly believes in bipartisanship.

Duration: 41m
Broadcast on: 20 Dec 2019
Audio Format: other

He built a career, and a presidential campaign, on a belief in bipartisanship. Now, critics of the candidate ask: Is political consensus a dangerous compromise?

In Part 4 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we examine the long Senate career, and legislative legacy, of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Guest: Astead W. Herndon, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background reading:

Mr. Biden now plays down his role overhauling crime laws with segregationist senators in the 1980s and ’90s. In an investigation, our reporter found that the portrayal is at odds with his actions and rhetoric back then.
The former vice president and current Democratic front-runner wants to unite the country in a divisive time. Here’s more on what Mr. Biden stands for.
This Supreme Court battle explains why Mr. Biden firmly believes in bipartisanship.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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In the summer of 2003, a large crowd gathers in the state capital of South Carolina for funeral of massive proportions. There's a horse-drawn carriage that's gliding through the street with a casket in the back draped in an American flag. When the casket is brought in to a large church, that's ornately decorated with flowers and wreaths. We're here to honor the memory of a man whose life was rich in years, whose career was filled with accomplishments, and whose calling was to serve his state and his country. One by one people step up to the microphone, a man who understood the art of compromise, but never had to sacrifice a principle. And praise the man's life and accomplishments. From early childhood until the day of his death, his life was governed by a strong sense of responsibility to help his fellow man. The man that they are there to eulogize is Senator Strom Thurmond, the longest serving member in the history of the U.S. Senate. He was a noted segregationist and open racist for much of his early career, including his opposition to the Early Civil Rights Act in the 1960s and his opposition to the desegregation of schools. And so because of that history, which made Senator Thurmond a controversial figure throughout his career, it's a little surprising who comes to the microphone next to speak at his funeral. Strom and I shared a life in the Senate for over 30 years. We shared a good life there and it made a difference. It's Senator Joe Biden. I disagree deeply with Strom on the issue of civil rights and on many other issues, but I watched him change. There's a lot of moments throughout Joe Biden's long-standing political career that point to how he views the world. This one, when he's eulogizing Strom Thurmond, I think, is a unique insight to how he views himself as a bridge builder between Republicans and Democrats, between black communities and white communities, and sees himself as someone who sees the best in people, and can bring that out of them even as his own party and maybe sometimes his own supporters doubt it. In the New York Times, I'm Michael Bovarro. This is the Daily. Part 4 in our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the top four Democratic candidates for president. Today, Joe Biden, it's Friday, December 20th. A step earned in, you pointed us to this moment when Biden is at Strom Thurmond's funeral, apologizing him as particularly revealing of who he is as a candidate today. And we repeatedly invited Joe Biden to tell us his story himself. But of the four Democratic presidential candidates that we decided to profile, he's the only one to have declined to participate. So where do you think that this story starts for Joe Biden? Well, for Biden, I think the story starts in the 1960s in Wilmington, Delaware. Good evening. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, 39 years old and an Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the leader of the non-violent civil rights movement in the United States, was assassinated in Memphis tonight. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Wilmington was one of the cities that experienced riots that changed the landscape of the city forever. And those riots really built on the racial tension that was already existing in Delaware.

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