In the last round of Democratic debates, Mayor Pete was asked about a racial incident involving a police shooting. Mayor Pete owned it, acknowledging that it was a black mark on the city he governs, and likewise acknowledging that the police force while making progress has a long way to go before it is sufficiently diverse to match the community it serves.
Frankly, the candor, humility, and intelligence that Mayor Pete has shown consistently has gained him considerable traction, witness his appearance on the debate stage- adjacent, tellingly, to the veteran Joe Biden. And Joe could take a lesson from Mayor Pete.
It must be said that Joe’s longevity and success in the public arena, and the personal enjoyment and good humor he almost always exhibits, reminds me no end of another successful Democratic politician of not so long ago, Hubert Humphrey, whose soubriquet was the happy warrior. With all that, Joe Biden’s length of service has a dark side, which Kamala Harris sought to exploit in the debate. This country’s emergence from separate- but- not- equal, Jim Crow legislation is ongoing and not done yet, but was certainly nearer the beginning than it is now when Senator Harris was a schoolgirl. Her criticism of Biden’s past actions while legitimate is along the lines of 20-20 hindsight. In Biden’s early career, he had to deal with a block of legislators that we’ve now nearly forgotten, southern Democrats whose longevity in office made them senior on nearly every committee in the house and senate and successfully obstructionist beyond anything we currently see in Congress. It was this environment that Joe had to navigate to accomplish any progressive reform. That some of these were achieved with compromises made with arch Dixiecrat James Eastland should not in any way be interpreted as Joe’s wholesale embrace of Eastland and Eastland’s racist agenda.
Keith McCullar and I have just embarked on the beginning of the 40th year of our relationship. Yes- 4-0. But it is only in the last 5 years we’ve enjoyed the entitlements that come with the legal recognition others enjoy, and the tax and social security benefits that we’ve paid for but heretofore had no right to receive. For Keith and me, we should have a large picture of Joe Biden in pride of place in our home- with a halo above it- as it was he who as vice president publicly moved the support for marriage equality to the executive branch of government. In terms of Joe Biden hagiography, I believe Mayor Pete would agree, and like us, would further agree that Biden’s progressive creds are eternally established.
In an aside in the debate, while Mayor Pete concluded his mea culpa about the racial incident in South Bend, debater Eric Swalwell said aloud that Mayor Pete could have fired the chief of police. It is ironic that Swalwell, whose ageist refrain during the debate, and before and afterwards, was how the older leaders of the party needed to step aside for those, like him, who are younger, he advocated the oldest of old political ploys- find someone to blame. Without any specific knowledge of what had gone on in South Bend, Swalwell’s ‘solution’- and one often favored by President Trump- was to find a fall guy and dispatch them publicly.
With all that, there is no question that so much of what was done not so very long ago moved racial equality forward in this country with glacial slowness and Kamala Harris’ comments are, excuse my understatement, well taken. But the fact is, Biden did the best he could with what he had to work with, and it is hardly fair and entirely unproductive to second guess events 4 decades hence. Mistakes were made, but the tortured, circuitous course of history can’t be rewritten, but perhaps its sting can be, well- ameliorated. Just take a lesson from Mayor Pete-own it, Joe, and acknowledge that we’ve yet a long way to go. But also be quick to point out that Kamala Harris- and Mayor Pete and Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro- are, in no small part due to your redoubtable efforts and decades of public service, now sharing the public stage with you.