MIAMI: Frontrunner Joe Biden faced repeated criticism on multiple fronts Thursday from his Democratic rivals for the 2020 presidential nomination, including calls to leave the battle to oust Donald Trump to a younger generation.
In a sometimes scrappy showdown of the Democratic heavyweights, Senator Kamala Harris landed several blows on Biden in the second of two nationally televised debates, putting the former vice president on the defensive as he argued that he is best-positioned to take on the Republican president.
Biden blasted Trump for his “horrible” policies that have exacerbated income inequality, while his chief rival for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, took it directly to the “phony” president, calling him “a pathological liar and a racist.”
But 76-year-old Biden also found himself on the receiving end of a pointed attack from a lower-tier candidate half his age.
Congressman Eric Swalwell, 38, called on him to “pass the torch” to a new generation better equipped to tackle climate change, expand health care coverage and reduce gun violence.
“I’m still holding on to that torch,” Biden snapped back.
Several rivals were clearly seeking to wrench it from his grip, including Harris, the only black woman in the race, who made a stirring call for Biden to recognize his recent “hurtful” comments about being civil with avowedly segregationist US senators.
Biden, with the room dead quiet, insisted he does not “praise racists,” and denied he opposed initiatives in the 1970s to bus children from predominantly black communities to better schools in more prosperous neighborhoods.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bussed to school every day,” Harris said, in one of the evening’s most potent moments.
“That little girl was me.”
Another candidate in the upper tier, Pete Buttigieg, has also been on the back foot on racial issues following the fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer in South Bend, Indiana, where he is mayor.
“When I look into his mother’s eyes, I have to face the fact that nothing that I say will bring him back,” Buttigieg said, adding that such tragedies are happening in communities across America.
“It’s a mess. We are hurting.”
With so many potential challengers to Trump, the party needed to split the top 20 candidates into debates over two nights in Miami, Florida.
Thursday’s session featured four of the race’s top five candidates in national polling, including Biden’s main challenger Sanders, the 77-year-old US democratic socialist senator whose high-spending policies have pushed the party leftward in recent years.
Harris, 54, may have vaulted herself into serious contention with her composed performance and steely showdown with Biden.
But after the debate she stressed it wasn’t personal.
“I otherwise have a great deal of respect for Joe Biden,” she said. “I do not believe he is a racist.”
Biden received no quarter from the old guard either.
When he was questioned about his support for the Iraq war and insisted that he took responsibility for getting 150,000 combat troops out of the country, Sanders pounced.
“Joe voted for that war, and I helped lead the opposition to that war, which was a total disaster.”
Biden, seeking a recovery in his closing remarks, called for restoration of “the “soul” of the country after Trump “ripped it out.”
“We have got to unite the United States of America,” he added.
All candidates savaged Trump for his immigration policy, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who said the president had “torn apart our moral fabric” by separating migrant children from their parents at the border.
Author Marianne Williamson, a surprise presidential candidate, branded the policies “state-sponsored crimes.”
When all contenders signalled support for undocumented immigrants’ access to health care, Trump, who has made stopping illegal immigration a centerpiece of his presidency, weighed in from the G20 summit in Japan.
In a tweet he accused Democrats of supporting “giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited health care. How about taking care of American Citizens first!?“
Debate also addressed whether the party should embrace a shift toward more liberal policies and government involvement in the economy.
On Wednesday third-placed Elizabeth Warren called out disparities in wealth and income and pledged to work to improve the lives of struggling families.
Sanders covered the same ground Thursday, but he also acknowledged that, in a shift to his Medicare for All platform, Americans would have to pay more taxes.
Biden under attack as 2020 Democrat rivals urge passing of torch
Biden under attack as 2020 Democrat rivals urge passing of torch
- Congressman Eric Swalwell, 38, called on him to “pass the torch” to a new generation better equipped to tackle climate change, expand health care coverage and reduce gun violence
- With so many potential challengers to Trump, the party needed to split the top 20 candidates into debates over two nights in Miami, Florida
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
