Biden Tries to Take Credit for Warren's Signature Achievement
The fourth Democratic presidential debate proved, if nothing else and yet again, that 12 candidates on one stage is too many. But the crowded debates have been something of an unexpected advantage for former vice president Joe Biden, because it dramatically cuts down the amount of time he has to speak on camera.
At this latest debate on CNN, for example, even though he got the second-most airtime (after Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren) he still only spoke a combined total of 16 minutes in the three-hour span. And that's to his benefit because the more time Biden has to speak, the more chances he has for a gaffe, like when he was asked about the "legacy of slavery" at the September debate, he started talking about hiring people to make sure parents had TVs on for their kids and then pivoted to Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Biden didn't confine his baffling digressions to his own questions on Tuesday. In one odd exchange, after Elizabeth Warren held forth on the necessity of fighting for big things like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she conceived of and helped establish, Biden cut in, saying loudly, "I agree. Let me—she referenced me. I agreed with the great job she did, and I went on the floor and got you votes. I got votes for that bill. I convinced people to vote for it, so let’s get those things straight too."
Warren didn't quite give him the credit he was looking for though, saying instead, "I am deeply grateful to President Obama, who fought so hard to make sure that agency was passed into law, and I am deeply grateful to every single person who fought for it and who helped pass it into law. But understand—"
That got a chuckle out of Biden, but her cut her off nonetheless: "You did a hell of a job in your job."
"Thank you," she replied in a tone that didn't convey that she was looking for his assurance. "But understand this. It was a dream big, fight hard. People told me, go for something little. Go for something small. Go for something that the big corporations will be able to accept. I said, no. Let’s go for an agency that will make structural change in our economy. And President Obama said, I will fight for that, and he sometimes had to fight against people in his own administration. We have—"
"Not me," Biden interrupted again.
"Good," Warren said before moving on as though he hadn't said anything. "We have to be able to make big, structural change."
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was Warren's brainchild before she entered the Senate in 2013, and it's probably her most significant achievement, despite the Trump administration's efforts to gut it. It was also a big feather in the Obama administration's cap, so it's likely that Biden was supportive at the time. There's not much obvious evidence that he was aggressively wrangling votes for it, as he claims, but a lot of politicking does happen behind the scenes. The CFPB was written into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which passed in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis. The former congressmen the bill is named for, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Barney Frank of Massachusetts, have both said that they have no memory of Biden being a key player in getting the bill passed.
On March 15, when a white supremacist livestreamed his mass shootings of a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, a country with one of the world's lowest gun homicide rates was stunned to silence. But only momentarily. The deaths of 51 New Zealanders, mostly Muslim immigrants, would not be met with a tepid countermeasure but a swift, clear response. Sean Flynn reports from Christchurch about the day of the massacre—and the days that followed.
Originally Appeared on GQ
