Joe Biden, Kamala Harris square off as Democratic rivals go on the attack on the debate stage

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Democratic presidential primary candidates, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, left, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., enter the debate stage on June 26, 2019, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. Leah Voss, TCPALM

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faced stinging criticism in Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate as fellow White House hopefuls criticized him in sharp terms about his history on issues of race and questioned the wisdom of turning to a leader of a past generation to take on President Donald Trump.

In the two months since announcing his candidacy, Biden has tried — and mostly succeeded — in staying above the fray in the crowded field of two dozen Democrats vying for the nomination.

That changed Thursday.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California spoke with emotion as she described her anguish with controversial comments Biden made at a fundraiser earlier this month in which he touted finding common political ground with two late segregationist senators.

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In night two of the Democratic debate, candidates bore down into issues, and each other. Kamala Harris went after Joe Biden for his past on busing.
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Biden, who has spent more than four decades in federal public service, said he spoke of James O. Eastland and Herman Talmadge to lament dying civility in Washington and make the case he had the ability to work with people he had strong disagreement with.

“It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and careers on segregation of race in this country,” said Harris, who is one two African-Americans in the race. 

She also took aim at Biden for working with the senators on his fight against school busing in the 1970s. Harris told the story of a young California girl who was part of the second class to integrate her school.

“That little girl is me,” she said. 

Biden snapped back that Harris’ was offering a “mischaracterization of his position across the board.” He added that he didn’t oppose busing to integrate schools, but was against the Department of Education ordering busing against local wishes.

“I don’t praise racists, that is not true,” Biden said, making a subtle dig at Harris’ career as a prosecutor. “If you want to have this campaign on who supported civil rights and whether I did or not, I am happy to do that. I left a good law firm to become a public defender when in fact my city was in flames because of the assassination of Dr. King. Number 2, as vice president of the United States I worked with a man, we worked very hard to see to it that we dealt with these (issues) in a major, major way.”

‘Pass the torch’

Another rival, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, pointedly told Biden that it was time to move on from political life.

“I was six years old when a presidential candidate came to the California Democratic Convention and said ‘it’s time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans.’ That candidate was then senator Joe Biden,” Swalwell said in the first direct shot at the former vice president. “Joe Biden was right when he said when it was time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans 32 years ago. He’s still right today”

Biden pushed back, saying he still has ideas to move the country forward.

“I’m still holding on to that torch,” Biden responded before pivoting. “The fact is that that’s why I propose us focusing on schools that are in distress. That’s why I think we should triple the amount of money we spend for Title I schools. That’s why I think we should have universal pre-K.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has picked on Biden for his ties to financial services community, also took a thinly-veiled shot a Biden.

“The issue is not generational,” Sanders shouted over cross-talk from the moderators and other candidates. “The issue is who has got the guts to take on Wall Street, who has the guts to take on the fossil fuel industry, to take on the big money interest who have unbelievable influence on the economic and political life of this country.”

As the candidates shouted over each other,  Harris piped in.

“America does not want to witness a food fight,” Harris interrupted, quieting the stage during one tense moment. “They want to know how we’re going to put food on the table.”

Swalwell, 38, a long shot candidate who was born about eight years after Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, went after Biden before even taking the stage.

“We can’t have a candidate who has ideas that are staler than Donald Trump’s,” Swalwell told CNN in an interview just before the start of the debate. “I don’t think we can nominate a candidate who has been in government for longer than 20 years. I don’t think that’s going to work.

“I think we need someone who’s going to offer a vision for the future, who lives and gets these issues on student debt, gun violence, health care cures, climate chaos.”

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Turning it to Trump

Biden remained steadfast that he is the most prepared among those in the crowded field to take on Trump, rebuild the middle class and unite a nation that’s increasingly divided by corrosive politics.

He repeatedly tried to put the focus back on Trump and spotlight his plans to undo the harm he says the president  has done to the country.

“Donald Trump has put us into a horrible situation,” Biden said

With Biden holding a double-digit lead in several national polls, it was widely expected that rivals would focus on him as they try to persuade voters to look beyond the most well-known Democrat running.

Biden, who served two terms as President Obama’s vice president and 36 years as a U.S. senator, has approached the nomination with a measure of certitude.

At the outset of his campaign, he vowed not to criticize fellow Democrats — and has stuck to the promise with few exceptions—while pounding on Trump’s policies and leadership style as an anathema to American norms.

But over the last few weeks, the rest of the field has become more aggressive in their engagement with Biden as most struggle make headway in race that polls show has remained largely stagnant since Biden’s entrance in late April.

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In addition to his comments about the segregationist senators, Biden was dinged as out of step on women’s reproductive rights when his campaign reasserted that he supported the Hyde Amendment, law that prohibits the use of federal money on abortion. After facing an avalanche of criticism, Biden said he had changed his mind and would no longer support the law.

Bernie Sanders makes a stand

Sanders, who is making his second run for the White House, has slipped in the polls since Biden’s entry, and looked to regain some of his footing on Thursday.

He pushed on his populist message and tried to amplify campaign agenda that includes calls for vastly expanding government-run health care and free college tuition. Sanders also acknowledged his plans would require tax hikes for some middle-class Americans.

“We have a new vision for America,” Sanders said. “We think it is time for real change.”

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg used a question about immigration policy to rebuke the morality of the Trump administration.

“The Republican Party likes to cloak itself in the language of religion,” Buttigieg said. “Our party doesn’t talk about that as much, largely for very good reasons, we are committed to the separation of church and state … But we should call out hypocrisy when we see it. And for a party that associates itself with Christianity, to say that it’s OK that God would smile at the division of families at the hands of federal agents? That God would condone putting children in cages? (It) has lost all claim to ever use religious language again.”

Biden used the moment to make the case for voters to hire someone with his breadth of experience. He argued that he’s the only one in the crowd of candidates with experience to broker a bipartisan compromise on immigration reform and end the crisis.

“We all talk about these things,” Biden said of negotiating a bipartisan agreement to address the root causes of why migrants are seeking asylum in the United States. “I did it. I did it.”

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Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, author Marianne Williamson, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang also took part in Thursday’s debate.

Night 1 of the debates

Ten other candidates debated Wednesday night. Four candidates — including one who just announced his candidacy last week — were left off the stage by the Democratic National Committee because they failed to meet eligibility requirements of either receiving contributions from at least 65,000 donors or garnering at least 1% of the vote in three-party sanctioned polls.

Candidates who appeared on the first of the two-night debates in Miami didn’t directly engage Biden, but the dialogue on both nights similarly hit on the same larger theme: How far should Democrats veer to the left?

Sanders is leading the push for a single-payer, government-run health-care system that’s been dubbed as “Medicare for All,” which would greatly expand on the current government-run program for the elderly.

Other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Harris and Gillibrand — have signed on as co-sponsors of legislation proposed by Sanders earlier this year.

The proposal has detractors among some centrist Democrats, who say that Medicare for All would blow up the private health insurance industry to the detriment of millions of Americans who are happy with their current plans.

Biden, Buttigieg, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and other contenders have pushed for a more modest overhaul known as the public option, which would expand American’s access to a government-run insurance plan but preserve the choice of private insurance.

Democrats previously toyed with the idea of pushing for a public option as President Obama and Democratic lawmakers early in the last president’s first term built the Affordable Care Act, which created health care exchanges where millions of middle and lower income Americans could get subsidies to purchase private insurance and expanded access to Medicaid.

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The debate came at a difficult moment for Buttigieg, who left the campaign trail for several days last week to deal with the fallout in his hometown of South Bend over the police shooting of a Eric Logan, a 54-year-old black resident of the Indiana city. Logan was fatally wounded by white South Bend Police Sgt. Ryan O’Neill in the early hours of June 16 as the officer investigated a series of vehicle thefts.  

Police say O’Neill found Logan rooting through a car after 3 a.m. in an apartment complex after hearing reports of someone vandalizing vehicles in the area. O’Neill says he shot Logan because he was wielding a knife, advancing toward the officer and refusing orders to drop the weapon, authorities said.

Logan later died at an area hospital after being transported in a squad car instead of an ambulance, a decision repeatedly questioned by Logan’s family and others. They wonder whether that contributed to his death. The officer was equipped a body camera but did not switch it on.

Moderator Rachel Maddow asked Buttigieg why his city’s police force is only 6% African-American.

“Because I couldn’t get it done,” Buttigieg acknowledged. 

Williamson and Yang get introduced to national audience

The debate also marked the first big moment on the national stage for two lesser known candidates, former tech executive Andrew Yang and activist and author Marianne Williamson.

Both have hovered in low single digits in most polls, but have managed to gather a measure of support on the trail with their outside-the-box messages.

Yang has made the idea of the federal government distributing a universal basic income of $1,000 per month to all Americans over the age of 18, a focal point of his campaign platform. He says universal income would play a key role in restructuring the modern economy to make it more equitable.

Williamson, who writes on spirituality and has been an adviser to Oprah Winfrey, in making the case for her candidacy said that the country is at a moment when it needs “a political visionary more than we need a political mechanic.” 

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In her closing remarks, Marianne Williamson said Donald Trump has gotten into the American psyche by harnessing fear for political purposes. She said she would overcome that fear and beat Trump by embracing love.

“Love will win,” she said.

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