Vice President Joe Biden touted his ties to the black community Tuesday, telling a group of black pastors in South Carolina about his time as a public defender in Delaware, when he was “the only white boy on the east side of Wilmington.”
Biden also complained about the tea party, calling the group “crazy,” reports CNN, which received a readout of Biden’s remarks from a person who attended the event.
“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden told the 100 or so pastors in the room, CNN reported. “This is a different breed of cat, man. I am not making a moral judgment, but I will tell you that they have no judgment.”
Biden was in South Carolina to help Democrats running for office there. Besides the closed-door meeting, he spoke at Allen University, a historically black college, and at a South Carolina Democratic party fundraiser at a private residence.
Some have speculated that Biden visited the state with other intentions. He is believed to be considering a 2016 presidential bid, and South Carolina is a key primary state. In 2008, Sen. Barack Obama defeated Sen. Hillary Clinton handily in the state.
Biden may have tipped his hand when he mentioned the “P-word” during his talk at Allen University.
After his wife Jill gave a glowing introduction, Biden said “you know folks, there’s only one reason I’d ever consider running for president – to get her to make that speech again.”
“She never says that in private.”
At the private meeting with state pastors, he speculated on what he characterized as the GOP’s electoral success while expressing his concern that a Republican takeover of the Senate will lead to further gridlock.
“If they win again, we are going to get no consensus on anything for the next two, four, six years,” Biden told the clergy members, according to CNN. “But if we beat some of these folks, it’s going to give some spine to the Republicans who know better.”
“If we win, will turn things around,” he promised. “There will begin to be consensus.”
Biden cited race another time when he touted his success in Delaware with black voters, saying that he “got 98 percent of the African-American vote every time I ran.”
Getting back to party politics, Biden said that GOP has been successful in recent elections because it has kept voter turnout low.
“What the other team has done so skillfully over the last 15 years is convince our folks that it’s not worth voting,” Biden said. “Rich guys never get fooled that it’s not worth voting. They always show up and vote. But they tell our folks it doesn’t matter, that government doesn’t work anyway.”
