If there’s one thing that a presidential candidate has never done in the history of debates, it is ceding their time when the light goes on. And if you watched the past two days of Democratic debates, you saw harried moderators frantically trying to silence candidates still speaking after their allotted minute expired.
That is unless you are Joe Biden defending yourself against your work with segregationist senators, and your votes against bussing, while getting grilled by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
In the debate’s biggest exchange, Harris pressed Biden on his record, and Biden offered a vociferous defense, until… he didn’t.
“I supported the [Equal Rights Act] for the beginning,” Biden said. “I’m the guy who extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years, we got to the place where we got 98 out of 98 votes in the U.S Senate doing it. I’ve also argued very strongly, in fact, that we deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box. I agree that everybody once they [gibberish] anyway my times up.”
.@JoeBiden shuts himself down during civil rights discussion: “My time’s up”#DemDebate2https://t.co/lDGv8CN3q9 pic.twitter.com/Je8UEtSzMj
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 28, 2019
It may be the first time a candidate’s done something like that, and doing so, while defending his policies on race, was criticized online.
“My time’s up, I’m sorry.” — @JoeBiden
— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) June 28, 2019
“Yeah, after Kamala did what she did tonight, Joe Biden, your time might be up.” — @Trevornoah https://t.co/sEljy57XBC
That’s a first. Joe calls his own time being up… mostly because it seemed like he couldn’t remember where he was going. Amazing stuff. #demdebate2 #demdebate
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 28, 2019
In the wake of Biden’s spat with Harris, a Biden aide went on the offensive, calling her attacks “exactly what Donald Trump wants.”
https://twitter.com/jljacobson/status/1144453426299850754
https://twitter.com/CristobalJAlex/status/1144428987596324865
Biden will have plenty of more time to answer that question, as there are still seven more months until the first primaries.
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- Kamala Harris grills Biden over segregationist remarks
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