Biden calls GOP out of touch

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March 13, 2012 6:31am 1150 Comments
Biden hails middle class at wealthy fundraiser
byCharlie Spiering Commentary Staff Writer
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Vice President Joe Biden addressed 87 wealthy Democrats last night attending a fundraiser at the home of Sen. John Kerry in Georgetown. As they dined on grass-fed New York strip steaks and white truffle mashed potatos underneath a outdoor tent, Biden criticized Republicans for being out of touch.

“These guys don’t have a sense of the average folks out there,” Biden said according to the pool report, “They don’t know what it means to be middle class.”

87 guests paid a minimum of $10,000-per-couple to attend the dinner.

[madd0ct0r]

and?

he isn't an average folk - but is he out of touch?

[Aaron MkII]

I read that and think "the GOP isn't the only one."

Grass-fed New York strip steaks and white truffle mashed potatoes?

True middle class right there.

[Scrib]

As mentioned, one doesn't have to be middle-class to empathize.

I've noticed a disturbing amount of this recently, where being rich is automatically made a bad thing. Romney and co. are out of touch because they're more interested in abolishing taxes for the top 1% and letting everyone else suffer. Their greed, not money makes them out of touch. If course, one could say similar things about the Dems.

And besides, the guy was just playing to his base anyway.

[Raw Shark]

Organic Grass-Fed NY Strip Steaks: $19.45 / each

Enough White Truffle Oil to make a serving of White Truffle Mashed Potatoes: $3.32

The Opportunity to get Endless Golden Mean Bullshit from the Right Wing: Priceless

That said, following an attempted "elitist" scandal over Obama preferring a condiment that can be obtained for $1.99/bottle on his burger, Biden & Co really should've anticipated this and served Tuna Helper or something similarly non-fancy-sounding. The point was to raise funds, not to provide food value for the money, after all.

[Akhlut]

Considering that when he was a Senator, Biden regularly rode the train from his home in Delaware to DC, I think he's not particularly elitist.

[Raw Shark]

Nonsense! Trains sound awfully fancy... If Biden wants to call the GOP out of touch, he should be walking to work, like Abraham Lincoln! [/fox news]

[Tanasinn]

Pathetic kindergarten-level tu quoque fallacy aside, it is important to remember that the Democrats are also a big business party. They simply represent a slightly different cabal of billionaires, lawyers, and corporations. And they don't couch their corporate cock-sucking in bizarre positive macho language.

Same scum, different suit.

[Bakustra]

The greater point should be that both political parties are so filled with the leisure classes that any national politician calling another politician "out of touch with the American people" is hilarious unless they deliberately disdain the leisurely life. Since they don't, it becomes apparent that either politicians are all clinical vegetables or these sorts of positions aren't all that honest- or else the upper class are stupid in general. I know what seems to be the most likely on the face of it.

Or, rather, what seems to be most likely is that American politics have become so oligarchic that only a tiny minority of politicians have any grasp of the way that people live in the middle or working classes, so that premium dishes don't conflict at all with this accusation. Therefore, the majority of politicians are out of touch. Those, like Biden, who may not have been in the past, probably are so now because in order to become included within the ranks of the powerful in the legislature, they had to adopt the practices and ideals of their leisure-class comrades. Thus, even if you elected entirely from the ranks of the laboring classes, unless you shattered the internal hierarchy of power in Congress (which is largely invisible to people without any direct experience), you would see them quickly shift to become more favorable towards the upper classes, for entirely rational and reasonable reasons.

[Sriad]

I read that and think "the GOP isn't the only one."

Grass-fed New York strip steaks and white truffle mashed potatoes?

True middle class right there.

If enjoying a delicious steak is wrong, I don't want to be right.

(And as someone who's helped with a few much-lower-tier fundraiser dinners, people really do have an expectation of good food when they overpay by an order of magnitude or more. Getting someone to pay $100 for a fancy dinner and floor show is a lot easier than getting them to pay $50 for a hotdog and a handshake.)

[Aaron MkII]

Fair enough, they did pay quite a bit.

[General Mung Beans]

Pathetic kindergarten-level tu quoque fallacy aside, it is important to remember that the Democrats are also a big business party. They simply represent a slightly different cabal of billionaires, lawyers, and corporations. And they don't couch their corporate cock-sucking in bizarre positive macho language.

Same scum, different suit.

Correction: Both parties are special-interest dominated, not necesarily corporations (ie Religious Right and NRA/pro-lifers for Republicans, labour unions and various "rights" groups for Democrats).

[madd0ct0r]

Being in a situation and emphasizing with a situation are two different things.

Otherwise I'd be out of touch with half the human race permanently.

less stupidly - I'm currently reasonably well off, not doing hard physical labor in the sun anymore, but that doesn't mean I won't rip a site manager who doesn't provide buckets of ice tea to shreds.

[UnderAGreySky]

I'm with you, maddoctor - I can't understand this mentality. "Oooh Obama is talking about the 99% when he is par of the 1% himself!" Well yes, Biden and Obama and Pelosi and co may be part of the 1 or 0.1% but they are the ones who are asking their own taxes to be raised! That's not hypocrisy, that's humanity.

[Broomstick]

As mentioned, one doesn't have to be middle-class to empathize.

^ This.

I'd say Franklin Roosevelt, a child of privilege and wealthy all his life, would be a good example, but there are others.

[Bakustra]

Pathetic kindergarten-level tu quoque fallacy aside, it is important to remember that the Democrats are also a big business party. They simply represent a slightly different cabal of billionaires, lawyers, and corporations. And they don't couch their corporate cock-sucking in bizarre positive macho language.

Same scum, different suit.

Correction: Both parties are special-interest dominated, not necesarily corporations (ie Religious Right and NRA/pro-lifers for Republicans, labour unions and various "rights" groups for Democrats).

If labor interests really concerned the Democratic Party, they would not have left opposition to antiworker movements (right-to-work, nullification of collective bargaining) up to grassroots movements alone. In fact, they would be campaigning against at-will employment and the Taft-Hartley Act currently. Instead, they are generally pro-corporate, since, like Republicans of the nadir, they decided that the winning strategy when faced with inconveniences was to throw their loyal supporters (blue-collar workers) to the wind. Both parties are dominated far more by corporate interests rather than by the boogeyman of American centrists, the "special interest group".

[UnderAGreySky]

That is true, and the Republicans have shown to be masters at shifting the Overton window. Whether it's been healthcare or deregulation or women's rights, the Republicans have dragged the Dems to the right in a big way.

[General Mung Beans]

Correction: Both parties are special-interest dominated, not necesarily corporations (ie Religious Right and NRA/pro-lifers for Republicans, labour unions and various "rights" groups for Democrats).

If labor interests really concerned the Democratic Party, they would not have left opposition to antiworker movements (right-to-work, nullification of collective bargaining) up to grassroots movements alone. In fact, they would be campaigning against at-will employment and the Taft-Hartley Act currently. Instead, they are generally pro-corporate, since, like Republicans of the nadir, they decided that the winning strategy when faced with inconveniences was to throw their loyal supporters (blue-collar workers) to the wind. Both parties are dominated far more by corporate interests rather than by the boogeyman of American centrists, the "special interest group".

What have the Democratic legislators in states like Wisconsin and Indiana been doing in the past year or so if not opposing Governor Walker's efforts against the unions and opposing the right to work law?