Joe Biden, seeking to regain some relevancy with his first major speech since the end of his presidency, instead reminded observers why Democrats pushed him off the stage as he stumbled through an anecdote about his introduction to racism.
Remembering his childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as he so often does, Biden said, “I remember pulling in, pulling into the parking lot and I had never seen – I had never seen hardly any Black people in Scranton at the time, and I was only going on fourth grade, and I remember seeing the kids going by, at the time called colored kids, on a bus going by.”
He said he asked his mother why that bus never turned to Claymont High School. “She said in Delaware they’re not allowed to go to school, in public school, with white kids,” the former president said.
Biden said that “sparked my sense of outrage as a kid, just like it does … I mean, and these young kids right here can tell you things affect them when they learn about something that’s really just unfair and unjust.”
President Donald Trump pounced on Biden’s verbiage, posting a clip of that segment from his speech on Truth Social.
Biden, speaking at a disability rights conference, has often struggled with his words when discussing race. In 2007, the then-Delaware senator, asked about Barack Obama’s emergence as a leading contender for the Democratic nomination, called him “the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
In 2019, Biden caused a stir when he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” before clarifying, “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids.” A year later, he said in a radio interview with “The Breakfast Club” Black voters they “ain’t Black” if they could not distinguish the difference between him and Donald Trump. He later apologized, saying, “I should not have been so cavalier.”
“I’ve never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted … I shouldn’t have been a wise guy,” Biden said.
The former president, who stepped down after one term under pressure from leaders from within the Democratic Party, has also drawn criticism for his past opposition to busing and his defense of Senate mentors like former Democratic Majority Leader and onetime Ku Klux Klansman, Robert Byrd of West Virginia.
But Biden has maintained strong support from Black voters, a constituency that helped him secure the nomination in 2016. And most of the criticism of his remarks Tuesday came from the right.
“Trump just posted this racist video of Biden – no caption needed. Best troll ever,” wrote one MAGA acolyte on X.
Added another, “Imagine if President Trump referred to black kids as colored kids? The liberals would be fake outraged and they wouldn’t shut up for days. So, who’s the actual racist?”
“Calling someone colored is pathetic and unacceptable. No one is coloring themselves,” wrote another.
But some on the left were also put off by Biden’s “tone-deaf” remarks, a reminder to them that the Democratic party needs new leadership.
According to NBC News, Biden’s speech was intended to serve as a springboard back into the political spotlight — not as a candidate, but an advocate willing to raise funds, campaign “and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design.”
In the Chicago speech Biden, focused on the Trump Administration’s haphazard cuts to the agency which administers Social Security benefits.
The Social Security Administration has announced it will cut 7,000 staff members from its workforce while closing six regional offices.
“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction,” Biden said. “It’s kind of breathtaking.”
Though he never identified Trump by name, the former president clearly had him in mind when he said, in America, “Nobody’s king, nobody’s the boss, everyone has a shot.”
But Biden may have taken his last shot, at least on the political stage.
Party activists and donors told NBC he’s forever tethered to the 2024 defeat and, at 82, is a symbol more of the party’s past than its future.
“Who’s going to want Joe Biden back in the game?” one former supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about him, told the network.
