He didn’t invite President Trump behind the bleachers to settle things mano a mano. He didn’t even mention the Commander in Chief by name.
But during a talk at Drew University on Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden lambasted Trump for riding the alt-right movement’s “half-baked nationalism…and phony populism” to attack the free press, the federal courts, the U.S. intelligence- and law enforcement communities, and Congress, where Biden served for 36 years as a Senator from Delaware.
“We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation,” Biden, 75, told a sold-out crowd of 2,800, as the season’s final speaker in The Drew Forum series.
Video: Former Vice President Joe Biden at Drew University:
But Biden hedged about challenging Trump for re-election, saying he still is mourning the 2015 death of his son Beau, who was Delaware Attorney General.
The former Vice President has expressed regret for saying earlier this month that he would “beat the hell out of Trump” if they were back in high school, in response to Trump’s Access Hollywood remarks about groping women.
Trump tweeted back that Biden “would go down fast and hard, crying all the way,” in such a schoolyard dustup.
Biden, Vice President for both of President Barack Obama’s terms, said they had agreed to refrain “for the better part of a year” from critiquing Trump, “to let him get his footing. Because in truth, he didn’t expect to win, he wasn’t prepared, it was going to take time.
“But ladies and gentlemen, after Charlottesville, I could no longer remain silent,” Biden said, referring to last year’s march of white supremacists, who were met by protesters.
Denouncing Trump for stating there were “very fine people on both sides,” Biden cautioned that “silence is complicity.”
‘AMERICA OWNS THE FINISH LINE’
Americans won’t tolerate the “breakdown of our political system” much longer, he suggested.
Early in his Senate career, Biden said, he learned to challenge opponents’ policies but never their motivations. This left room for reaching compromises and solving problems.
Members of both parties traveled together on foreign missions and got to know each other, he said. Senators had a private dining room where they could mingle casually. Now, things are so polarized that even that is gone, Biden said.
Both parties have lost touch with daily concerns of middle-class Americans, he said. The nation’s pessimism can be overcome–but not with “a Hobbesian vision of a world in which for Americans to succeed, others must lose.”
Biden found common ground with conservative columnist George Will and Republican Sen. John McCain, who have voiced alarm about democratic institutions being at-risk. He also spoke warmly of another Republican, former New Jersey Gov. (and past Drew University President) Thomas Kean, whose eponymous visiting lectureship sponsored the talk.
Rejecting “spurious nationalism” for its “closed-off and clannish” attempt to divide the world into us and them, Biden asserted: “We have to remember who we are as Americans. We have to place our democratic principles back in the center of our foreign policy. America is led not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
Video: ‘Silence is complicity,’ former V.P. Joe Biden tells Drew University crowd:
Noting last week’s student-organized March for Our Lives, Biden sounded optimistic for the future.
These young people and the Millennials who preceded them are “the most open, most giving, most generous, most talented and most engaged” generations in U.S. history, said Biden, a lawyer who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and at his alma mater, the University of Delaware.
Yet they must be convinced to seek public office. “America owns the finish line. So get the hell up and take it back!” he said.
#MeToo and 2020
As a Senator, he authored the 1994 Crime Act, which banned sales of assault weapons (the ban expired a decade later), and the Violence Against Women Act.
In addition to stricter gun laws, Biden said he favors re-emphasizing old-fashioned cops-on-the-beat policing, which he credits with reducing violent crime in the ’90s.
Asked about the #MeToo movement during a question-and-answer session with Drew President MaryAnn Baenninger, Biden praised the courage of women who come forward to report sexual abuse.
More must be done to educate men on their moral obligation to respect women, he said, adding, “I think we’re on the verge of beginning to change the culture.”
So what about 2020?
Biden ran for president in 1988 and 2008, but shelved a 2016 bid after his son Beau died of brain cancer. He’s still mourning that loss, he said. As a freshman Senator, he was devastated by the death of his first wife and their infant daughter in a car crash.
“No man or woman should ever ever ask you to support them for president unless they can look at you and say you have my whole heart, my whole soul, all my effort. I’m not there yet. The healing process is working. The family is coming together.
“That doesn’t mean in January or February or March it will not be different. I just don’t know. I honest to God don’t know,” he told the Drew audience.
Explaining why he looks good in the polls right now, Biden got a huge laugh by quoting his late father.
“My dad used to say, ‘Joey, don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative!”
Other speakers in the 2017-18 Drew Forum were Neil deGrasse Tyson, Samantha Bee and David Axelrod.
