Joe Biden: Trump's 'Willingness to Divide This Nation Knows No Bounds'

[DonViejo]

Source: Mediaite




by Josh Feldman | 9:31 am, August 27th, 2017

Former Vice President Joe Biden has a piece out in The Atlantic this morning tearing into President Trump for his divisive words and actions in the weeks since Charlottesville.

Biden––who has publicly spoken out to criticize the Trump administration a few times––writes that we are now “living through a battle for the soul of this nation”:

The giant forward steps we have taken in recent years on civil liberties and civil rights and human rights are being met by a ferocious pushback from the oldest and darkest forces in America. Are we really surprised they rose up? Are we really surprised they lashed back? Did we really think they would be extinguished with a whimper rather than a fight?

Did we think the charlatans and the con-men and the false prophets who have long dotted our history wouldn’t revisit us, once again prop up the immigrant as the source of all our troubles, and look to prey on the hopelessness and despair that has grown up in the hollowed-out cities and towns of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and the long-forgotten rural stretches of West Virginia and Kentucky?

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/online/joe-biden-trumps-willingness-to-divide-this-nation-knows-no-bounds/

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'We Are Living Through a Battle for the Soul of This Nation'

The former vice president calls on Americans to do what President Trump has not.


JOE BIDEN 6:00 AM ET

In January of 2009, I stood waiting in Wilmington, Delaware, for a train carrying the first African American elected president of the United States. I was there to join him as vice president on the way to a historic Inauguration. It was a moment of extraordinary hope for our nation—but I couldn’t help thinking about a darker time years before at that very site.

My mind’s eye drifted back to 1968. I could see the flames burning Wilmington, the violence erupting on the news of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the federal troops taking over my city.

I was living history—and reliving it—at the same time. And the images racing through my mind were a vivid demonstration that when it comes to race in America, hope doesn’t travel alone. It’s shadowed by a long trail of violence and hate.

In Charlottesville, that long trail emerged once again into plain view not only for America, but for the whole world to see. The crazed, angry faces illuminated by torches. The chants echoing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 1930s. The neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists emerging from dark rooms and remote fields and the anonymity of the web into the bright light of day on the streets of a historically significant American city.

If it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now: We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation.

more
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/joe-biden-after-charlottesville/538128/

[democratisphere]

1. Divide and Conquer.

"We the People" shall overcome.

[NurseJackie]

2. It's not only Trump. There are others who ASSIST him by dividing the opposition party.

Stealthy attacks that denigrate and smear Democrats and the Democratic party only serve to weaken the ONE party that stands in the way of Trump's agenda. Their treachery should not be ignored either.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. Trump is the Bizarro version of Abraham Lincoln.

[DallasNE]

4. But Joe, While True You Are Not Blameless

Some of those cities got hallowed out even more during your 8 years in office. What did you do about it? Did you retrain those displaced workers to prepare them for the future? Part of that hallowing out has been the demise of labor unions that have training as part of their agenda. You just sat on your hands as this was going on. You should have been out there sounding the alarm. The debate is one that we needed then and it is one that we need to have now. You only nibbled at income disparity rather than taking it head on, leaving the door open for somebody like Trump. (Of course the media also played a major role in creating this dire situation).

[Merlot]

6. Seriously?

[DK504]

7. It's kinda hard to get an agenda through Congress

when the majority of the Congress is in direct opposition of the sitting President. It was impossible to do. And the Republicans, the Rethugs stopped nearly everything he tried to do for US and US.

The Rethugs took away his Supreme Court pick!!!! How was the admin supposed to do anything with the Rethug congress in lock step against President Obama and VP Biden.

[DallasNE]

14. Obama's Messaging Was Alway Inadequate

Obama got clobbered by the black Cambridge Professor that was arrested for "breaking" into his own home. It was the first of many racist cop on black citizen encounters the ended up leading to Black Lives Matter - a movement that had to happen yet be a determent to electing Democrats. Republicans paid a one election price for the Great Recession and now have the greatest power they have had since Hoover. Republicans shut down the government and paid no price. That is not based on performance. That is based on messaging and use of the bully pulpit.

Obama and Biden needed to go around the country with rallies touting their accomplishments and denouncing Republican obstruction and attempts to bully. It didn't happen nearly enough. Sound policy still needs PR to bolster it.

[adigal]

17. Trump brags about things he never did; Obama wouldn't talk about things he did do

He is a man of humility, and he didn't seem to like hand-to-hand combat. I love Obama, but always thought he gave in to the opposition on everything but health care:excusing those who crashed the economy, not hammering on McConnell every single day over Merrick Garland. He is not a fighter. Biden is much more of a fighter than Obama.

[Bob Loblaw]

9. Hallowed?

nt

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

5. Ex: he cant wait til day after the eclipse to deliver his nothing-burger speech - does not even

Last edited Sun Aug 27, 2017, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)

acknowledge the rare event that had managed to unite us, however briefly, as Americans.

NOOOOOO he cant let that pesky eclipse steal any attention that he thinks has to be his. Just has to dominate the news cycle 24/7 and insert some divisive rhetoric to get everybody all worked up again.

Just one little example out of many. We were enjoying to eclipse stories on NPR on the way home, and when the divider in chief came on we just went WTF?

[panfluteman]

8. After Contemplating All of Trump's Flagrantly Divisive Words and Actions in the Past Week or So,

a theory or possible explanation for his motives that may sound a little crazy and far-fetched dawned on me. Trump could be secretly, in his innermost heart of hearts, longing to get out of the presidency, which is proving itself to be very different from the cushy, prestigious dream job he had hoped it would be. These extremely divisive actions and statements from him might just be a way, twisted and crazy as it may seem, to taunt America to impeach him, so he can return to his old life, which he has already admitted in a news interview that he misses. Heck, Trump may feel incredibly boxed in, driven on by the Russian Kompromat hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, and provoking America and its congress to impeach him may be the only way out that he sees...

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

15. I seriously doubt that - being emperor of the free world suits him & his grandiose

sense of self just fine.

[L. Coyote]

10. K & R

[murielm99]

11. Every time someone criticizes 45,

they should condemn Congress in the same breath. He is being enabled by their do-nothing bigoted party. Their words are not enough. They need to impeach.

It is clear, too, that the people on the left who did not vote for our nominee also deserve condemnation. Until they accept their role in this disaster and do everything they can to clean up this mess, I have no use for them. I don't want to hear about how they held their noses. I don't want to hear about how Hillary was not their first choice. Grow up and learn that politics is about compromise. It is often about taking two steps forward and one step backward over and over until we reach our goal.

[BarbD]

12. Absolutely and unequivocally correct!

[brer cat]

13. +++++ nt

[madokie]

16. I loves me some Joe Biden

Make that Vice President Joe Biden.

He has more compassion in one of his pubic hairs that the orange anus has in his whole worthless family


Save for Barron, he might be ok