Has the Democratic Party Accepted Mass Incarceration as a Norm?

[Drunken Irishman]

61. Look, I don't know what your game is here...

But my response was to point out that Biden is not responsible for the increase in mass incarceration, and he isn't. If that's your argument, you're wrong. The Biden-Thurmond Violent Crime Control Act of 1991 didn't even pass, and was an extension of Biden's initial crime bill from that time that was killed due to strict gun control measures Republicans couldn't agree to.

The 1991 Biden Crime Bill also put some strict restrictions on the death penalty, including adding in habeas corpus provisions.

Here's some quotes about the fight for this bill:

On Nov. 24, conferees finally met to draft a joint crime bill. It went badly. Democrats were convinced that Republicans had decided to sabotage the bill because the president couldn't support gun control. Republicans claimed the Senate-House Democratic conspiracy wanted a weak bill to force a presidential veto.

The Republicans refused to cooperate, but the more numerous Democrats passed the bill anyway. "The Republicans tried to stall, so I finally said 'Here's the bill,' and we passed it," Biden said. "Yes, we just {steam}rolled it."

The Bush administration promised a veto and launched a ferocious lobbying effort to derail the bill in the House, but on Nov. 27 the fractious Democrats held together long enough to pass it, 205 to 203. Then, a few hours later, Senate Republicans threatened a filibuster and threw the bill into legislative limbo. There it remains.

Today, Democrats accuse the Republicans of bargaining in bad faith and getting cold feet when they realized that a Democrat-backed bill could pass. The real dispute, said Biden, was not habeas corpus, but "guns, guns, guns." If Bush accepted the Brady bill, Biden charged, the Republican right would abandon him.