Aides Urged Biden Not to Mention Eastland

Washington Post: “As seemingly random as it was for Biden to reference Sen. James O. Eastland, a long-ago deceased segregationist senator from his own party, some in Biden’s campaign had heard him discuss this relationship before — and warned him against mentioning it in public. Eastland, who represented Mississippi in the Senate from the early 1940s to 1978, often said that African Americans were ‘an inferior race.’”

“Aides said they had urged Biden to find a less toxic example.”

Said one: “It might move him to pick a different senator. But he’s not someone you can go to and just say, ‘You’ve been doing this x number of years and you can’t do this anymore.'”

Politico: “But rather than bolster his image as an effective pragmatist, Biden’s parables of working with long-dead Dixiecrats have started to reinforce two of his biggest liabilities: his age and his record on race.”