Joe Biden’s ‘Damn Liar’ Confrontation Shows He Learned Lesson from Obama’s Joe the Plumber Moment, Perhaps Too Well

Tommy ChristopherDec 6th, 2019, 1:24 pm
 

Vice President Joe Biden’s well-publicized confrontation with a “damn liar” in Iowa bucked the conventional wisdom that you shouldn’t ever insult any voter, but will it end up helping or hurting his presidential campaign?

In case you missed it, Biden let loose on a retired Iowa farmer who stood up at a campaign event and started spewing lies. And yes, Biden was mean. He definitely did not use the word “fat,” as some have alleged, but he did mock the dude for being “sedentary,” challenged him to a pushup contest, and when the man said he wouldn’t vote for Biden, told him “You’re too old to vote for me!”

Now, I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert on the mind of the average voter, or even the average Democratic voter, but my first two reactions to this interaction were “Jesus, Biden is going to get killed for this!”, followed immediately by “Eff that guy!”

The more I saw it, the more I loved it, because this guy wasn’t just some voter with an honest disagreement with Biden, he was a supporter of another campaign (Elizabeth Warren’s) who got up and mocked the former VP’s age, then lied about him. As Biden would say later, he just needed to “shut this down.”

The scene also reminded me, almost immediately, of former President Barack Obama’s run-in with another midwestern jackass named Joe the Plumber, whose name was not Joe (it was Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) and who was not a plumber (he was a contractor).

Obama met up with Joe while on the campaign trail as a candidate in 008, and spent a good five minutes humoring the guy as he just made stuff up about how an Obama tax proposal would hurt his imaginary business.

For his trouble, Obama managed to create a right-wing superstar, and was attacked every time he or his campaign tried to refute the dumb stuff Joe the Plumber would go around saying. I don’t think there’s an Obama supporter alive who doesn’t watch that video and headdesk themselves comatose watching Obama be so nice to the guy.

I probably would have out-Bidened Biden in that spot, and told him “Why don’t you go vote for McCain, then come crying to me when you can’t afford health care, I’ll still be here.”

But there is a conventional media wisdom that any slight of any voter ever is necessarily a bad and damaging thing for a candidate, best exemplified by the media freakout when Hillary Clinton called racists “deplorable,” and was dead accurate in assessing their numbers.

There are some indications that that wisdom may be somewhat obsolete in a post-Trump world. For example, the conservative whinesite Newsbusters, where I always go to find things that I will love because they hate them, flagged a CBS News report in which Biden was described as a “prizefighter” who “punched back” at the lies.

And on Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, several of the panelists said it was a good moment for Biden because people want a candidate who is going to fight back. Eugene Robinson even called it “one of the better moments” of the campaign to date.

Granted, me and a Morning Joe panel liking this moment doesn’t prove anything, and even I have some reservations that, on their own, average voters will be able to judge the nuances of this situation and determine that the guy had it coming. But media narratives are very influential, and these are signs that point to a narrative in Biden’s favor.

This sort of exchange is nothing new for Biden, though, and while this one may have served him well, the overall results are mixed. During a 4th of July parade, Biden was reportedly heckled by a Trump supporter who called him “Sleepy Joe,” and Biden invited the man to jog with him.

A few weeks later, he was confronted by an immigration activist who demanded he apologize for Obama-era deportations. Biden was adamant in his positions, and a bit impatient, but contrary to what the activists who posted the video claimed, he did not “refuse to apologize,” he said he would apologize for deportations that separated families or were not related to a felony criminal record.

Biden got a lot more attention recently when another activist made the same demand, and Biden sarcastically replied “You should vote for Trump.”

On the substance, most people probably agree with Biden that the U.S. should not end deportations altogether, but the aggressiveness of the response risked alienating voters that a Democrat needs to turn out in order to win.

Biden has also made a habit of not taking guff from conservative journalists on the campaign trail, as when Breitbart’s Joel Pollak tried to get cute about Trump’s “very fine people” remark. “Lets get this straight, he said ‘there are very fine people on both groups.’ They were chanting anti-Semitic slogans, carrying flags,” Biden said.

He has also repeatedly gone after Fox News reporter Peter Doocy over that network’s coverage.

But at an LGBTQ forum in September, he also snarked at Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Lyz Lenz. when she asked him about calling Mike Pence a “decent guy,” quipping “You’re a lovely person,” and reportedly told her “You’re a real sweetheart” as he left the stage. Lenz did herself no favors among Democrats with her biased questioning, but Biden’s reaction drew the wrong kind of attention.

Part of the appeal of Joe Biden not taking any of anyone’s guff is that it’s natural, it’s authentic, it isn’t rehearsed. But that’s part of the risk, because it’s also reflexive, which can make it difficult to choose your targets wisely.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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