CNN’s Joan Walsh advised likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden not to run, telling him to support a woman if he wants to change what the former vice president called “a white man’s culture” earlier this week.
Her remarks came during a discussion of Biden’s comments with CNN anchor Erin Burnett late Wednesday.
{mosads}“You’ve got Joe Biden as the white grandfather in all of this, the white man saying it’s a white man’s culture. OK. It’s got to change,” Burnett said.
“I have an idea for how he can change it,” Walsh, a staunch Democrat, replied. “Don’t run.”
“Come out and support a woman,” she continued. “There’s six women in the race, four female senators. If you want to change it, that’s a way to change it.
“Y’know, I admire Joe Biden,” Walsh added. “I am a fond Democrat. He was a great vice president. But if you want to change it, don’t run.”
At the Biden Courage Awards in New York on Tuesday, Biden said he regretted his actions as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at Anita Hill’s Senate hearing in Oct. 1991, which centered around her sexual harassment accusations of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
“A brave lawyer, a really notable woman, Anita Hill, a professor, showed the courage of a lifetime talking about her experience being harassed by Clarence Thomas,” Biden, who was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Thomas’s nomination, said. “But she paid a terrible price. She was abused in the hearing. She was taken advantage of. Her reputation was attacked. I wish I could have done something.”
“It’s an English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture,” Biden said. “It’s got to change.”
Thomas was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice by a narrow 52-48 vote.