My Case for a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris Ticket

[Celerity]

105. You have already tried this route with me on another post. I am not buying it.

Biden was too much baggage in regards to, and is too hostile to the younger generations, both in past legislative acts he helped get passed into law and current attitudes about, to gain mass traction support. Factor in his age and also that if he is pushed to be the top of the ticket, it will entail that a woman or a minority (or both) will be thus a priori reduced to playing second fiddle (as VP, if he even picks a woman or a minority as a running mate), and it is something <i cannot get behind.

Here is a detailed accounting from another thread.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11449653

He was the Senator from Delaware, so he often came down on the side of big banks and big insurance.

This article is from 2015. Student loan total debt is now over 1.5 trillion USD. Far higher than total credit card debt.

Joe Biden Backed Bills To Make It Harder For Americans To Reduce Their Student Debt

https://www.ibtimes.com/joe-biden-backed-bills-make-it-harder-americans-reduce-their-student-debt-2094664

Jennifer Ryan did not love the idea of taking on debt, but she figured she was investing in her future. Eager to further her teaching career, she took out loans to gain certification and later pursued an advanced degree. But her studies came at a massive cost, leaving her confronting $192,000 in student loan debt. “It’s overwhelming,” Ryan told International Business Times of her debts. “I can’t pay it back on the schedule the lenders have demanded."

In the past, debtors in her position could have used bankruptcy court to shield them from some of their creditors. But a provision slipped into federal law in 2005 effectively bars most Americans from accessing bankruptcy protections for their private student loans.

In recent months, Democrats have touted legislation to roll back that law, as Americans now face more than $1.2 trillion in total outstanding debt from their government and private student loans. The bill is a crucial component of the party’s pro-middle-class economic message heading into 2016. Yet one of the lawmakers most responsible for limiting the legal options of Ryan and students like her is the man who some Democrats hope will be their party's standard-bearer in 2016: Vice President Joe Biden.

As a senator from Delaware -- a corporate tax haven where the financial industry is one of the state’s largest employers -- Biden was one of the key proponents of the 2005 legislation that is now bearing down on students like Ryan. That bill effectively prevents the $150 billion worth of private student debt from being discharged, rescheduled or renegotiated as other debt can be in bankruptcy court.

Biden's efforts in 2005 were no anomaly. Though the vice president has long portrayed himself as a champion of the struggling middle class -- a man who famously commutes on Amtrak and mixes enthusiastically with blue-collar workers -- the Delaware lawmaker has played a consistent and pivotal role in the financial industry's four-decade campaign to make it harder for students to shield themselves and their families from creditors, according to an IBT review of bankruptcy legislation going back to the 1970s.

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Joe Biden for President? Media Buzz Ignores How Veep Worsened Student Debt on Big Banks’ Behalf

VIDEO AT LINK

https://www.democracynow.org/2015/10/20/joe_biden_for_president_media_buzz



Washington is abuzz with rumors Vice President Joe Biden will soon enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. While a new campaign would seek to capitalize on Biden’s two terms as vice president, it would also invite scrutiny of his Senate record in a Democratic political climate notably more progressive today than it was when Biden last sought the nomination. Biden’s 1994 crime bill, while implementing sweeping gun control, also helped fuel mass incarceration with financial incentives to keep people behind bars. Biden is also known for close ties to the financial industry, notably helping push through a 2005 bill that made it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy. According to The New York Times, the credit card issuer MBNA was Biden’s top donor from 1989 to 2010. Now, as speculation over Biden’s presidential aspirations reaches a fever pitch, the Obama administration is seeking to repeal one of his key legislative achievements. The White House wants to undo a provision in the 2005 bankruptcy law that made it harder to reduce student debt, preventing most Americans from claiming bankruptcy protections for private student loans. The administration’s effort follows the publication last month of an International Business Times exposé by David Sirota, “Joe Biden Backed Bills to Make It Harder for Americans to Reduce Their Student Debt.” Sirota discusses Biden’s role in passing the legislation.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Washington is abuzz with rumors that Vice President Joe Biden will soon enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden has huddled with key advisers while putting out feelers to potential staffers and supporters. The speculation has increased since August, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported Biden’s son, Beau Biden, urged his father to run before dying of cancer earlier this year. This month, Politico reported Dowd’s source for the story was Joe Biden himself. A longtime Democratic senator from Delaware, Biden previously ran twice for the Democratic nod. The last time was in 2008, when he ultimately became then-Senator Barack Obama’s running mate.

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Joe Biden’s greatest betrayal: The one Senate vote that makes it hard to support a Biden run
As a Senator in Delaware, Biden shepherded to passage a law that decimated bankruptcy protection for milllions

https://www.salon.com/2015/10/21/joe_bidens_greatest_betrayal_the_one_senate_vote_that_makes_it_hard_to_support_a_biden_run/

Any day now, Vice President Joe Biden is set to announce whether he'll run for president, thus flummoxing the Democratic field and making life unnecessarily more difficult for the current pair of highly qualified frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. There's much to be said about why Biden should gracefully decline to run and, frankly, the left would do well to assert itself against his would-be candidacy. Not only would Biden give the traditional press another reason to manufacture a false equivalence between, say, Donald Trump's buffoonery and Joe Biden's penchant for blurting awkward things, but just beneath Biden's likability lurks a darker side that ought to summarily repulse the left, and especially anyone who was screwed by the Great Recession.

On several occasions throughout the past 15 years, the colossally powerful banking lobby unsuccessfully pushed for new legislation to tighten the rules pertaining to who can file for bankruptcy protection, and how much protection they'll receive. The first time in recent memory occurred in 2000, when then-President Clinton pocket-vetoed bankruptcy reform legislation at the request of First Lady Hillary Clinton, who had been convinced to do so by a little known Harvard professor and vocal reformer named Elizabeth Warren. Joe Biden, on the other hand, voted for the bill. Another bill in 2001 failed to pass with Biden's vote. But the 2001 bill was resurrected after George W. Bush's second inauguration.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was passed in April, 2005 by the U.S. Senate in a 74-25 vote, including the "yea" vote of Joe Biden, and was quickly signed by President Bush. (Hillary Clinton skipped the vote. She did vote "yea" on the unsuccessful 2001 bill, although she later claimed to regret the vote, and explained that she had traded her support in order to make sure that alimony and child support payments weren't compromised by the new law. More on that later.)

In light of what occurred in its wake, this law is easily one of the most disgraceful aspects of the Bush and Biden legacies. The harm it did to middle-class Americans, especially during the crushing events of the recession four years later, is immeasurable. The bill made it nearly impossible for average families to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, also known as "clean slate" bankruptcies intended to discharge nearly all debts, a matter of a few years before they'd need it the most. The bill instituted an all new means test to determine whether debtors with insurmountable financial hardships earned enough income to pay back all or part of their unsecured debts, specifically credit debt. If they earned too much, a clean slate bankruptcy became impossible, and they'd be forced to file Chapter 13, which would force debtors to pay back their debt over a five-year timeline, thus legalizing neo-indentured-servitude to creditors.


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here is a 2018 article that deal with current attitude (and its a disastrous stance to take in terms of gaining younger voter support)

BIDEN DOESN'T WANT TO HEAR MILLENNIALS COMPLAIN: 'GIVE ME A BREAK'

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-says-millennials-dont-have-it-tough-780348

Millennials who think that times are tough in 2018 have no room to complain, according to former Vice President Joe Biden, who said that he had “no empathy” for young people who compared today to the struggles of the 1960s.

“The younger generation now tells me how tough things are—give me a break,” said Biden, while speaking to Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times to promote his new book. “No, no, I have no empathy for it, give me a break.”

Biden compared the complaints of millennials to what he experienced growing up in the 1960s and '70s, mentioning the civil rights and women’s liberation movements that were gaining traction simultaneously with the Vietnam War, making the United States a troubling place for young activists at the time.

“Here’s the deal, guys,” continued Biden. “We decided we were going to change the world, and we did.”

Whether Biden agrees or not, there is evidence to support the idea that millennials, the generation born between the early 1980s and mid-'90s, have inherited a slew of problems that have put them at an economic disadvantage compared to previous generations. Millennials are more likely to have advanced college degrees, but earn 20 percent less than baby boomers when they were the same age. Healthcare, housing and education are more than five times more expensive than they were just a few decades ago, writer Michael Hobbes tells NPR. Student debt has skyrocketed, making home ownership unrealistic for many, reports Bloomberg. And the struggle to advocate for civil rights continues today, as recent movements like #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter and #TimesUpNow have demonstrated.

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I do not know why you keep trying to convince me that Biden is the way to go for the top of the ticket. I am not going to change my mind. I will vote for him, obviously, if he is somehow the nominee, obviously, but IMHO he is far from our best bet.