SALON

Thursday, Jul 12, 2012 4:16 PM UTC

Biden at NAACP: “It’s good to be home”

The vice president shows why he's on the ticket – and it's not just to appeal to working-class whites

By

Topics: Joe Biden, NAACP, 2012 Elections, Texas,

Biden at NAACP: Vice President Joe Biden addresses the NAACP annual convention, Thursday, July 12, 2012, in Houston. (Credit: AP/Pat Sullivan)

I finally understand why Mitt Romney got a standing ovation from the NAACP when he ended his disrespectful speech Wednesday: because it was over.

Like Romney, Joe Biden was booed by the civil rights group – when he signaled he was nearly finished by saying, “Let me close.” This crowd didn’t want to let Biden finish – and I don’t think our garrulous VP gets that a lot. But Biden was everything Romney wasn’t, making the Republican’s awkward Wednesday appearance look even more ridiculous by contrast.

Hilariously, right-wingers are trying to foment black resentment of the fact that President Obama sent Biden to address the NAACP rather than going on his own. But Biden may have more cultural capital with the older-generation members of the group than the president does. He opened his speech by saying, “It’s good to be home,” and noting he’s a lifelong NAACP member. He hailed old friends from his days in Wilmington, Del., including a “Rev. Wright” who Michelle Malkin, unbelievably, tried to insist was Chicago’s Jeremiah Wright (You can’t make this stuff up.) Biden also called out to a Delaware NAACP leader named “Mouse,” who Biden said “got my back a bunch of times,” when he was the only white guy at an early job. (The Obama-Biden campaign just emailed to say: “Clearly he [Biden] was referencing a different Reverend Wright — the Vice President was referring to an old friend from Delaware.”)

Apart from his early shout-outs to the crowd, Biden mostly delivered his standard stump speech, with a little more call and response. He talked about Obama’s decision to kill Osama bin Laden, laid out the campaign’s extensive women’s rights pitch, and detailed the accomplishments of the stimulus and the auto industry rescue. Nothing terribly different from what he says to other groups, although he noted Romney’s tax plan, which cuts the Earned Income Tax Credit, would raise taxes for about 2 million African-American families while cutting them for the Romney family.

The speech was tailored to the NAACP on two issues: education and the one Romney wouldn’t touch, voter suppression. On education, he mocked Romney for insisting class size doesn’t matter, and that lowering class size might even hurt students, sneering, “Tell that to the private schools.”

And on voting rights, Romney and Republicans “see a different future, where voting is made harder, not easier,” Biden said, asking, “Did you think we’d be fighting these battles again?”

Biden ticked off Obama’s accomplishments with fierce pride, calling the president “my guy,” and exhibiting a widely shared anger at his treatment by the GOP. He was the right person to send to the NAACP after Romney’s debacle. Reminiscing about being the only white guy at his Wilmington job back in the day, protected by his friend “Mouse,”  Biden is now the white guy who’s got the back of our only black president when he needs it. This is why even though I’d love to see Hillary Clinton back in electoral politics, it’s a crazy notion to remove Joe Biden as VP. He’s absolutely the white guy for the job.

Joan Walsh

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America." More Joan Walsh.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 34 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
135 points136 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
119 points120 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
90 points91 points | 79 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
90 points91 points | 18 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
70 points71 points | 18 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations