In an exclusive interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Vice President Joe Biden gave his thoughts on Christine O’Donnell’s primary win in his home state of Delaware, saying that the political atmosphere was one where “no moderates need apply.”
Biden also discussed the contentious debate over tax cuts, saying, “I want this fight.”
In response to Newt Gingrich’s comments on President Obama’s citizenship, Biden confessed to being “stunned that he bought into this playbook.”
The Vice President also promised that the administration was “going to push as hard as we can” to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
The full interview will air tonight on “The Rachel Maddow Show” at 9pm ET.
Excerpts from the interview are below. If used, please credit MSNBC.
[ON CHRISTINE O’DONNELL]
MADDOW: The Republican nominee for your old Senate seat in Delaware is not long-time Congressman Mike Castle but rather-- Christine O’Donnell, who you have run against in the past. Her own party has derided her as "unelectable to any office." And they, in fact, ran robo-calls that called her a fraud. Very surprising result. How do you explain that-- that vote in your home state?
BIDEN: It’s hard to explain. First of all, we’re a single Congressional district state. We’re a small state. Only five smaller. 185,000 roughly Republicans-- registered in the State of Delaware, closed primary. She got roughly-- what? 25,000-28,000 votes out of 50,000 cast. I’m confident that if Republican folks out there really thought there was a shot here and they showed up, I think Mike-- if every Republican had a vote, Castle, I think, would have one 130 to 50.
But the truth is that-- it’s real tough for the Republican Party. It really-- it’s kind of hung on a shingle. You know, no moderates need apply. It’s sort of spawned a-- I don’t know-- a tone in politics that is-- not helpful. To getting things done. And we’re a moderate state. And we thank God we have a really first rate candidate. This guy is solid. He is honorable. He’s incredibly well educated. He’s done a great job running the largest county. They end up with a AAA bond rating. They-- he’s paid all the bills. Eliminated the deficit. This is a really solid guy. And so, that’s the good news for us.
[ON TAX CUTS]
BIDEN: Here you have Mitch McConnell offering-- talking about the deficit. Offering a tax bill that the Washington Post said today, if it were to be passed, tax cuts for the very wealthy, if it were to be passed, would create a hole in the deficit bigger than the Recovery Act and the health care bill combined. Let me put this in perspective. We want a middle class tax cut. If you’re making $50,000 a year and you’re a family of four, you get $2,100. That’s the difference between being able to have meat a couple times a week. Being able to pay your utility bill. $2,100 matters. You know where 50 percent of the tax cut for the top bracket goes? And that’s $350 billion? The people whose average income is $8.3 million a year. And they’re gonna get a $350,000 tax break. What are they gonna do with that? That they couldn’t do already? But yet, somebody, a family of four, making $100,000, they have two kids in school. They get a $4,100 tax break. It matters to them. It matters. I want this fight. I want this fight.
MADDOW: Does that mean letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the richest people in the country, while pushing for their extension, the middle class tax cut for everybody else, is that a black and white issue? Is that a-- we haven’t heard a veto threat, for example, from the President on that.
BIDEN: It is a black and white issue.
MADDOW: Is that something that the administration’s gonna go to the mat for?
BIDEN: Yes, absolutely. And look, here’s the deal. The deal is that if you think about it in sort of black and white terms, it also points out the hypocrisy of the Republicans talking about deficits. Remember, these are the guys who put two wars and a prescription drug bill on a credit card, plus a tax cut. The day we walked into office, we inherited a deficit of $1.3 trillion. Before we turned the lights on in the West Wing, we had, in the previous seven months, lost 3,750,000 jobs. And folks, you know, what we gotta make clear to people is these guys are straightforward. They’re not bad-- they’re not bad guys.
But they really believe what the leader of the Republican’s campaign committee said. "We are going to reinstate the exact same agenda." Look, this would be a different fight if they said, "You know, the Bush policies really dropped us in a hole so deep that it’s just this short much-- this short of a depression. And, you know, we don’t like the Democrat answers, be we offer these-- these answers that are different." They’re not. They’re the same. "We don’t like the Democrat--" I know what they’re against. I don’t know what they’re for yet. That’s-- all different. I mean this literally. What are they for that’s different than they have been for the previous eight years?
[ON GINGRICH’S COMMENTS ABOUT PRESIDENT OBAMA]
MADDOW: When the punch is insane, when the punch is, "The President is secretly foreign. Or the President is secretly a space alien." Or whatever-- whatever the flavor of the week is in there. What’s the best way to punch back? In storytelling, in making effective, memorable news stories about this sort of thing, usually the most fun thing to do is to talk about the person who has come up with that science fiction. Sort of name and shame them. Try to make them famous for it. That’s not the way it works in politics, because to do that, you guys would have to be elevating these sort of smear merchants who are coming up with these things. So, how do you respond when the question’s about the birth certificate or anything else like that?
BIDEN: Well, the way you respond is go and try to focus on the ideas, substantive ideas, the smear merchants are peddling. To point out that this isn’t about the accusation they’re making, it’s about delegitimization to try to give an opportunity for their argument to win without having to make it. And so, it seems to me it’s a little bit like-- again, I have known Newt Gingrich for years. I am stunned. I really am. I am stunned he bought into this-- into this playbook. I mean, there is such-- seems like there’s such a desperation on the Republican side to pander to the lowest common denominator that-- I just-- it is-- and by the way-- my wife always says-- I say, "Look, I have great faith in the American People’s judgment." And she’d look at me and say, you know, "Would you have as much faith had you lost?" (LAUGH)
[ON DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL]
MADDOW: Let me ask you about fighting on an issue that has been a thorny political one and that is-- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Administration very firm in its stance that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed. Are you personally involved in trying to get it past the Senate next week?
BIDEN: Absolutely. I was-- personally involved in getting it out of committee. Look, I-- I don’t only think we should-- we should repeal it. I think everyone who was fired should be able to be reinstated if they wanted to. I just think that-- look, there’s 20 nations in the world that are our allies that allow openly gay and lesbian people to be able to-- to function. I mean, here we have fired hundreds of translators, when we’re out there trying to figure out how under God’s name to find enough people to speak everything from Farsi to Urdu to-- I mean, this is absolutely mindless what we’re doing.
We’re gonna get a chance. I think we have the votes when it comes up in the Defense Authorization Bill. I know this sounds like this is-- you know, Senate speak, I apologize. There’s gonna be a vote on a bill, authorizing spending for the Defense Department. In that bill, there is a provision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. End it. Bury it. Now, the Republicans are gonna introduce, at some point, an amendment to strike it from the bill.
We’ve got the votes to defeat that. Then the Republicans, if they are as foolish as I think they may be, then they may try to hold up the Defense Authorization Bill. And they’re gonna probably filibuster that. I believe that at that point the issue is, "Are these guys so out there that they’re willing to punish the Defense Department and the fighting women and men who we have in Afghanistan, which you just-- visited, Iraq? I mean, that’s-- that’s the frame, but we have enough votes to sustain support for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Vote. And we’re just gonna push it as hard as we can.
MADDOW: In terms of the timing of that, if that goes as you say it’s possible that it could go. If that repeal happens, the timing is that the Defense Department is studying the issue through December. They’ve got another, I think, 60 days or something that they-- after which they would have to delay any repeal process. So, we’d be looking at, best-case scenario for repeal, would be sometime in the spring. With the policy under such intense scrutiny, that study underway at the Defense Department, progress being made both in the courts and politically, why not suspend the discharges of people under the policy now, pending that Defense Department review? Why keep kicking people out now while all of this movement is happening towards ending the policy?
BIDEN: Because that is the compromise we basically had to make to get the votes to finally repeal it. In other words, everybody’s looking for, in my view, if I could just wave a wand, it would just be flat repeal. No one else would be able to suspend it. And everyone who was suspended would be able to come back if they wanted to. But the truth of the matter is, we had to build a consensus for this. Working very hard on the telephone. Calling people. And everybody’s looking forward to the orderly elimination of this law. I would prefer it not be orderly. I prefer it just end, boom, done. But that’s why that hasn’t happened. It’s resulted in us getting over 55 votes, I think we’ll get 55 vote, to flat repeal it.
END
