Joe Biden stumbles with wistful memory of working with white segregationist who called him son — ‘not boy’

Jun. 19--Joe Biden showed his slip again.

The Democratic frontrunner wistfully recalled his days of working well with white segregationist senators at a Manhattan fundraiser Tuesday night -- a tone-deaf approach to race relations that could cost him black support in his crowded primary fight.

Biden boasted of his ability to get along with Dixiecrat racists "even though we didn't agree on much of anything."

"If we can't reach a consensus in our system, what happens?" Biden said at the fundraiser, according to a pool report. "It encourages and demands the abuse of power by a president."

Biden clearly believes his ability to work across ideological and partisan lines is a selling point in the era of scorched-earth politics personified by President Trump.

He even put on a Southern drawl to take on the voice of ex-Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi cotton planter, Democrat and ardent segregationist.

"He never called me 'boy,'" Biden recalled. "He always called me 'son.'"

It's unclear what point Biden was trying make about Eastland's choice of diminutives. The most obvious explanation is that Eastland, who once complained of whites mixing with "mongrel races," didn't call Biden "boy" because Biden was white, not black. That would not exactly back up Biden's claim that all was hunky-dory during the days of working together with segregationists.

Biden's campaign did not return calls for comment about his comments.

Today's Democrats might not look back so fondly at an era in which white supremacists still held considerable sway in the party. Indeed, Biden's tribute to the courtly get-along politics of a half-century ago might be an Achilles heel with a progresssive generation shaped by #BlackLivesMatter, Pride and #MeToo.

The incident points to a bigger problem with Biden's presidential bid.

Although he is popular in the party, and particularly among black voters, because of his starring role as President Obama's top lieutenant, his political roots are as a much more centrist Democrat who came of age in a much more conservative era.

Biden's stands on many issues were forged in the 1970s and '80s, and some of them have remained uncorrected through the Obama presidency when his own policy views were secondary to those of his popular boss. Now that he is running as his own man, Biden looks set to go through a grueling process of resetting those stands to reflect the realities of 2020.

He already ran into flak for his position on abortion. Under pressure from pro-choice advocates, he flip-flopped on his decades-long support for the Hyde Amendment blocking federal funding for abortions.

But that may prove to be a storm in a teacup compared to the segregationist kerflufle, which liberal critics may see as less of a correctable policy stand like the Hyde Amendment and more a basic part of Biden's political make-up.

And Biden can ill afford any cracks in his so far solid support from black voters.

Polls have shown him winning the support of about half of black voters, an eye-opening number considering the presence of two other major black candidates in Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.

Black voters also solidly backed Hillary Clinton in early polls in the 2008 Democratic primary race, until Obama won the Iowa caucuses and won the endorsement of Oprah Winfrey. That led to Obama's crushing victory in the South Carolina primary, which in turn helped him sweep a string of southern primaries and lock up near-unanimous support of black voters.

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