Biden Asks Crowd To Imagine an America Where Obama Had Been Assassinated
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden asked his Dartmouth College audience Friday to picture what would have happened if former President Barack Obama had been assassinated in 2008.
The comment came on the 11th anniversary of the day Obama tapped Biden to serve as his vice president.
Biden — who was at Dartmouth to speak at a town hall on health care — was drawing parallels between the activism of the 1960s and college liberal activism of today.
“I think of where we are at the moment. You know, none of you men are old — women are old enough, but a couple of you guys are old enough to remember. I graduated in 1968. Everybody before me was, drop out, go to Haight-Ashbury, don’t trust anybody over 30, everybody not getting involved,” he said.
“I’m serious, I know no woman will shake their head and acknowledge it, but you guys know what I’m talking about. Right?” Biden added.
OMG!!! Another rambling babbling demented performance from #Biden at his town hall in Dartmouth NH. You have to find it on @YouTube because @MSNBC @CNN will never let you see it because corporate media are hiding him from viewers so they don’t see how addled he is. This is tragic
— Jay Bird (@312shelly3) August 23, 2019
“But then what happened? … I only have two political heroes. I have one hero who was my dad, but I have two political heroes were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy,” he said, according to The New York Times.
“My senior semester they were both shot and killed. Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee. What would have happened in America?”
In assessing the climate of the late 1960s and early 70s, Biden told the New Hampshire crowd, “Things changed. You had over 40 kids shot at Kent State on a beautiful lawn by the National Guard.”
Four students died and nine were wounded during the May 1970 protest at the Ohio campus of Kent State University.
“But here’s the deal. An entire generation was energized. We finally finished the Voting Rights Act. We finally got the Civil Rights Act back on the road,” Biden said.
“We finally were in a position where we started to begin the women’s movement, and began to treat women — I remember because I was such a big supporter of the ERA in 1972, quote — to show you how things have changed, thank God — ‘Well, you know why Biden is for the ERA he’s probably gay.’ Not a joke,” Biden said.
Biden further recounted an anecdote in which he said he supported gay rights because as a boy he witnessed two men kissing and was told by his father that it meant they loved each other.
During Biden’s two appearances Friday at Dartmouth, he made a comment about his wife, Jill, who is an educator, according to the New York Post.
The candidate said that if he did not support teachers, “I would be sleeping alone.”
During his second event, he said, “I find most rich people are as patriotic as poor people.”
Biden in NH tonight quipped that he isn’t going “nuts” because he didnt know exact location of his earlier Dartmouth speech pic.twitter.com/0y7iqiDyHi
— Bo Erickson (@BoKnowsNews) August 24, 2019
During that event, he referenced his prior appearance earlier in the day and said he was either at Dartmouth’s medical school, or perhaps there were simply medical students in the crowd, The Washington Post reported.
“I want to be clear,” Biden then said in a message directed at the media in attendance.
“I’m not going nuts. I’m not sure whether it was the medical school or where the hell I spoke. But it was on the campus.”
Not everyone was sold on Biden.
“I do wonder sometimes whether [Biden] really is [as] electable as people think,” Mort Lynn, 76, from Sunapee, New Hampshire, told the Boston Globe.
“When I hear him talk lately it is a bit jarring because he is not the person I remember from eight or 10 years ago.”
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