Take the financial crisis, for example. Biden can reasonably be tarred with having helped pave the way for both the bubble and the crash with his support for deregulation. In response, Biden has already said that one of his greatest regrets involves the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Roosevelt-era law that enforced a separation between the securities industry and commercial banking. And he supported the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform and the creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau — Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild — in its wake. If Biden were a senator, he could tell a story about how his views on finance had evolved without having to get too far into the weeds.
But Biden wasn’t just a senator. He was a key player within the Obama administration’s response to the financial crisis. There’s a powerful argument from the left that said response was woefully inadequate, both in terms of responding to the economic contraction (we needed a much larger fiscal and/or monetary stimulus) and addressing the underwater housing market (the administration’s response prioritized helping banks who held the underwater mortgages over helping distressed homeowners).
Biden is the only candidate who could be forced either to defend the administration’s record in this area, or to disavow it.
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