Joe Biden sides with the bad guys
Before the jury found Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of his charges in the shooting of George Floyd last month, the US President shared his own views.
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“I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office, as citizens waited for the decision. “Which is … I think it’s overwhelming in my view.”
Biden also talked about getting to know the Floyd family since Chauvin shot him. The US President talked about the “pressure and anxiety” the Floyd family faced during the trial.
Oh, the Floyd guys visited the White House, too.
“I waited until the jury was sequestered and I called,” Biden said at the time. “They’re a good family.”
This was a rare moment. Presidents don’t usually talk about cases of this nature. They are advised to stay quiet about hot cases and high-profile trials. However, Floyd’s death caused mass protest and Biden had to talk.
People around Biden say the shooting left a mark on Biden. This had a huge impact on his policies.
“I think for him, it sort of made it more real, like it did for a lot of Americans,” said one longtime adviser. “To see a black man killed in public, to see the inhumanity.”
Historian Michael Eric Dyson said Biden talked about Floyd’s shooting at a meeting with academics at the White House.
“I think he was definitely changed by it,” Dyson said in an interview. “It gave him a greater sense of responsibility to make sure things are different.”
In his presidential campaign in 2020, Biden was criticized for supporting the 1994 crime bill. People criticized him for having outdated views on race. Kamala Harris criticized him during a 2019 debate.
However, Biden would never become a president without the African-American community. A lot of people discussed his years as Barack Obama’s vice president.
“He is no Johnny-come-lately,” Dyson said. “He has been with us on this trip and he knows our stories.”
Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. Zelizer said the last year pushed the President “out of the 1990s mentality of centrism and toward a deeper understanding of institutional racism.”
“The combination of Trump, with his endless appeals to white backlash politics, and a movement that insisted public policy must change at basic levels, moved him into a new place intellectually,” he added.
“The question is, how does it translate into an agenda?” Zelizer added.
During his joint address to Congress earlier this month, the President urged Congress members to pass the police reform bill in George Floyd’s name. He said Democrats and Republicans are “engaged in productive discussions.”
“We need to work together to find a consensus,” Biden said and set a deadline of May 25, which the first anniversary of Floyd’s death.
They won’t make the deadline. Is there any progress towards the police reform bill?
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday revealed the Biden administration is confident in the negotiations on the Capitol which includes Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.Y.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.).
“All of the negotiators are continuing to press forward on working to find common ground to get this done. The president wants to sign it into law. And, of course, the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, something that impacted the president personally and deeply as it impacted millions of Americans, was a moment to call for action, to call for forward movement. But the negotiators, by all accounts, are continuing to make progress,” Psaki told reporters. “That is a positive sign.”
“We are not going to slow our efforts to get this done, but we can also be transparent about the fact that it’s going to take a little bit more time. Sometimes that happens, that’s OK,” she added.
The Biden administration is taking action independent of Congress in order to enact reform.
The Justice Department decided to launch a pattern-or-practice investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department right after Chauvin was convicted. Attorney General Merrick Garland decided to rescind a memo from Trump’s time in the Oval Office. The memo restricts the use of consent decrees to reform police departments accused of misconduct.
The President’s efforts are moving beyond police reform. The coronavirus relief bill includes language seeking to address racial inequalities. Biden promised to stop voting rights restrictions. According to him, these are “un-American” and “sick.”
“Voting rights has become a must pass,” said Joel Payne, the Democratic strategist. “I don’t think Biden can give it the old college try. He must do it. Police reform is secondary to that.”
People close to the President say they realize some of Biden’s political viability depends upon his ability to make a lasting change.
“I think he’s always understood what Black and brown people face every day,” the longtime adviser said. “But now he really gets it. It changed his heart in a way.”
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Source: The Hill
