Fresh off a couple of bizarre incidents involving biting his wife’s finger during a speech, and going on about children playing with his leg hair and bouncing on his lap (eww), former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Dementiaville) now says that rival candidate Pete Buttigieg stole his health coverage plan. And if there’s anyone on today’s Democratic field who should recognize theft when he sees it, it’s got to be Thievin’ Joe.
In a wide-ranging interview with reporters aboard his “No Malarky” bus in Iowa earlier this week, Biden said “He stole it!” regarding Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It” proposal. POLITICO reports:
Biden lamented media coverage that he said initially dismissed the durability of his candidacy because he was too moderate and didn‘t embrace policies like Medicare for All. Biden said the field was now moving closer to his views and away from the left. When asked whether he unintentionally set the stage for Buttigieg, who is leading in the polls in Iowa, Biden grew animated.
“Set it up? He stole it! Set it up?” Biden said.
Back during the October debates, I might have mentioned during my drunkblog that there’s nothing more tedious than listening to a bunch of lefties argue the minutia of their various health coverage proposals that will never actually make it through Congress as proposed.
But I was wrong. There is something more tedious: Listening to a bunch of lefties argue about who gets credit for their various health coverage proposals that will never actually make it through Congress as proposed. Because let’s be honest: “Medicare for More” or “Medicare for Those Who Want It” or even “Medicare for Dogs Who Think They’re People” or whatever today’s name for it is, it’s all just another step along the way to “Medicare for Everybody Whether You Want It or Not, Suckers.”
Tedium aside, Biden was unguarded enough during his presser to bring up the very thing that sank his first POTUS run. POLITICO also quoted Biden saying, “What would you have done to me?” if Biden had cribbed off Buttigieg’s homework. “You would have torn my ears off. I would be a plagiarizing, no good, old man who did bum bum bum.” [Italics in the original report.]
Um… Biden is a plagiarising old man. Or at least he was once a plagiarising middle-aged man. You might recall that he was forced out of his first presidential run for stealing childhood stories straight out of UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s speeches. That was more than three decades ago, back when I was a college freshman who could barely handle his liquor. Today, I have a son old enough to make cocktails for me. So maybe it’s time to forgive Biden for transgressions so old he can barely remember them.
Or maybe not. How about this gem from 1987 in which we learned that Biden was also once a plagiarising young man:
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign, today acknowledged “a mistake” in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.
Mr. Biden insisted, however, that he had done nothing “malevolent,” that he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully. And he asserted that another controversy, concerning recent reports of his using material from others’ speeches without attribution, was “much ado about nothing.”
Steal, get caught, claim it’s all just bum bum bum, repeat until POTUS?
Nice work if you can take it from someone else, I suppose.
So when you read headlines like these…
• Biden’s Ukrainian Corruption Scandal Casts Ominous Shadow Over 2020 Run
• Do We Need To Start Discussing Joe Biden’s Anger Issues?
…you shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. Joe Biden has always been just smart enough to see what he could get away with, and just dumb enough that few believed he could actually be that corrupt — like finding out your favorite Bond supervillain had the IQ of an ashtray.
“I’m clearly too stupid to be that diabolical” has somehow worked for Biden for decades, but it’s never worked well enough to win him the Democratic presidential nomination…
…until now? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
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