Joe Biden bragged on Thursday that the same “sexism” he claimed derailed 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would not deter him from beating President Donald Trump.
The former vice president, who himself has a history of making comments women might find offensive, told an audience in Iowa he believed Clinton was treated in an “unfair” manner based on her gender, specifically from then-candidate Trump and his allies.
“I think there’s a lot of sexism in the way they went after Hillary,” Biden said of the former secretary of state. “I think it was unfair. An awful lot of it. Well, that’s not gonna happen with me.”
Although Biden did not elaborate on how critiques of Clinton’s fitness for the presidency were sexist. The former secretary of state lost a close contest to Trump after struggling to explain a series of ethical and foreign policy missteps, most notably her use of a private email server and her shadowy donations accepted by the Clinton Foundation.
Strong evidence also exists that Clinton lost, in part, because of her campaign’s inability to make inroads with working-class voters, most significantly white women without a college education. Even though former President Barack Obama won such voters overwhelmingly in 2008 and 2012, Clinton lost them to Trump by a margin of 28 percentage points.
Biden, though, did not mention any of that on Thursday, choosing instead to play up that “sexism” would not impact his quest for the White House. Despite the assurance, the former vice president may have spoken too soon, especially in light of his recent jousting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) over health care.
The dust-up initially started when Biden’s campaign accused Warren of lying about the true costs of her Medicare for All proposal in November 2019. Biden’s attack, although not new by any means, elicited a rare response from Warren, who suggested the former vice president was running in the wrong primary. The rebuke set off another round of attacks from Biden, with some of the former vice president’s staff even highlighting the fact Warren was a Republican for most of her life in an effort to discredit the criticism.
Biden, himself, responded to Warren shortly afterward by penning an article on Medium repudiating her “elitist” and “condescending” approach to politics. Although the former vice president did not mention Warren by name in the piece, the pointedness of his attack left little doubt as to whom it was aimed at:
But at another level these kinds of attacks are a serious problem. They reflect an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics. If someone doesn’t agree with you — it’s not just that you disagree — that person must be a coward or corrupt or a small thinker.
Some call it the ‘my way or the highway’ approach to politics. But it’s worse than that. It’s condescending to the millions of Democrats who have a different view. It’s representative of an elitism that working and middle class people do not share: ‘We know best; you know nothing’. ‘If you were only as smart as I am you would agree with me.’
To some, however, Biden’s singling out 0t Warren as “angry” and “unyielding” came across as sexist.
“The question is whether Biden would use the same words to describe a male professor — and I suspect he would,” Gloria Steinem told The New York Times in the wake of the comments. “The larger problem is that they’re about style, not content.”
Warren, herself, seemed to agree. When asked in November if she thought the former vice president was a sexist, the Massachusetts Democrat refused to unequivocally say no.
“I think you should ask him,” Warren said.
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