Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Here's a question: what does anyone remember about Biden's campaign in 2008? [View all]janterry
(4,429 posts)and then followed up on by the press.
Here
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/08/why-biden-s-plagiarims-shouldn-t-be-forgotten.html
Here's a bit from Slate:
Biden lifted Kinnocks precise turns of phrase and his sequences of ideasa degree of plagiarism that would qualify any student for failure, if not expulsion from school. But the even greater sin was to borrow biographical facts from Kinnock that, although true about Kinnock, didnt apply to Biden. Unlike Kinnock, Biden wasnt the first person in his family history to attend college, as he asserted; nor were his ancestors coal miners, as he claimed when he used Kinnocks words. Once exposed, Bidens campaign team managed to come up with a great-grandfather who had been a mining engineer, but he hardly fit the candidates description of one who would come up [from the mines] after 12 hours and play football. At any rate, Biden had delivered his offending remarks with an introduction that clearly implied he had come up with them himself and that they pertained to his own life.
Most American political reporters were not so attuned to Britains politics that they recognized Kinnocks words. But Michael Dukakis adviser John Sasso had seen the Kinnock tape. Without his bosss knowledge or consent, he prepared a video juxtaposing the two mens speeches and got it into the hands of Dowd at the Times, David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, and NBC News. When the story broke on Sept. 12, Biden was gearing up to chair the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Robert Bork, Ronald Reagans far-right nominee. Biden angrily denied having done anything wrong and urged the press to chase after the political rival who had sent out what came to be called the attack video.
Unfortunately for Biden, more revelations of plagiarism followed, distracting him from the Bork hearings. Over the next days, it emerged that Biden had lifted significant portions of speeches from Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. From Kennedy, he took four long sentences in one case and two memorable sentences in another. (In one account, Biden said that Pat Caddell had inserted them in his speech without Bidens knowledge; in another account, the failure to credit RFK was chalked up to the hasty cutting and pasting that went into the speech.) From Humphrey, the hot passage was a particularly affecting appeal for government to help the neediest. Yet another uncited borrowing came from John F. Kennedy.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided