Would An Intervention Even Work?

To the Democratic front- runner:  be better.

This morning's WaPo describes someone who might be impervious to wise counsel:

As seemingly random as it was for Biden to reference Sen. James O. Eastland, a long-ago deceased segregationist senator from his own party, some in Biden’s campaign had heard him discuss this relationship before — and warned him against mentioning it in public. Eastland, who represented Mississippi in the Senate from the early 1940s to 1978, often said that African Americans were “an inferior race.”

Aides said they had urged Biden to find a less toxic example.

“It might move him to pick a different senator,” said one adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “But he’s not someone you can go to and just say, ‘You’ve been doing this x number of years and you can’t do this anymore.’ ”

Elizabeth Bruenig on Biden's quest for the bipartisan unicorn:

... Biden’s campaign is premised on a promise he can’t keep: that the problems plaguing Washington are mainly aesthetic and can be reversed with the good attitude, deep experience and folksy charm of a man such as him.

But political polarization is a real, ongoing historical phenomenon in the United States, and it exists outside of Washington. [snip]

Such deep disparities can’t feasibly be solved by better relations between particular politicians. They exist among voters themselves and are thus reflected in the antagonistic tactics of legislators and, lately, the president.

Infidel 753 on the second gaffe in a month:

But his comments this week take that tone-deafness to a whole new level.  Eastland and Talmadge were relics of a monstrous past, active supporters of enforced segregation (not just "opponents of desegregation" as they're being characterized).  They advocated continuing denial of civil and political rights to one-eighth of the American people on the basis of skin color.  Biden's point was that it is necessary and possible to maintain civility and work with people one disagrees with, and he's not even wrong about that -- it's the choice of Eastland and Talmadge as examples that constitutes a gaffe of epic proportions.  Because the stance on race they represent is no longer seen as a mere matter of disagreement, certainly within the modern Democratic party.  It represents something fundamentally evil.

As a politician with a long history of self- sabotage, this is not something we need at a time when we're in a fight for the survival of our country.  If he can't discipline himself, or be disciplined, we're in for some trouble.