Keller @ Large: Joe Biden Holds His Own As Opponents Take Aim During Democratic Debate
BOSTON (CBS) – Round two of the midsummer Democratic debates was expected to be gang-up-on-Joe Biden night. Kamala Harris, Bill DeBlasio, Julian Castro, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand all took their turn at bashing the poll-topping piñata.
But lo and behold, Biden more than held his own, despite a couple of dicey moments.
And it was Harris, the other half of the center-stage duo, who was left off-balance at times by challenges to her record and current plans.
In an echo of the previous evening's attacks on the Bernie Sanders Medicare-For-All single-payer plan, Biden and Harris squared off over its proposed phase-out of private insurance – which Harris supports – and the potential cost to taxpayers.
"No one has to keep their private insurance. But if they like their insurance they should be able to keep it," said Biden.
This gave Harris an opening to evoke the politically-damaging fib the Obama/Biden administration peddled in the run-up to Obamacare's passage, that if you liked your doctor you could keep him or her. But in what was perhaps a sign of the enduring appeal of the Obama legacy to Democratic voters – especially the crucial African-American vote that so far overwhelmingly prefers Biden – Harris defaulted to the claim that Biden's plan would "allow insurance companies to remain with the status quo, doing business as usual."
And an exchange over who will pay for single-payer health care involving Harris and others left unrebutted Biden's angry claim that "there will be a deductible, it will be a deductible in their paycheck. Bernie Sanders acknowledges $30 trillion has to ultimately be paid."
Biden was on the defensive when the debate turned to the much-reviled Clinton-era crackdown on crime, which he supported.
But perhaps his most glaring stumble came when New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio pressed him on the profuse deportations that were part of Obama-era immigration policy.
Did you speak out against it, DeBlasio asked?
"I was vice president, not the president. I keep my recommendations in private," replied Biden.
Sen. Booker pounced on that one.
"You can't have it both ways," he said. "You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign, you can't do it when it's convenient and dodge it when it's not."
But while Biden took plenty of heat, Senator Harris also found her record under repeated attack, most notably by Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who took aim at Harris's tenure as California Attorney General.
"She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and laughed about it when asked if she ever smoked marijuana," said Gabbard. "She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts ordered her to do so."
Harris rebutted those charges and declared "I am proud of making the decisions and actually doing the work" by contrast with a mere legislator like Gabbard. But she seemed rattled.
Forgive me for invoking an old sports cliché, but they say in boxing that if you want to take his title away, you've got to knock out the champ.
Biden looked wobbly in last month's debate. But those who expected Harris or anyone else to deliver the final blow last night went to bed disappointed.