Biden is also coming under fire for these remarks:
By the way, you know, remember I got in trouble with some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side, because I said, ‘You know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people.’ Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change. Because when we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke. I’m not [inaudible] revolution. But not a joke. It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the other, the other. You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down.
Left-wingers are exercised, of course, by the comments that “nothing would fundamentally change” for rich people during Biden’s presidency and that he really needs them. (Both comments would have been true for the last two Democratic presidents, too, but they never made the admissions.)
As a whole, though, the riff doesn’t really hang together. If inequality is so extreme that it threatens to cause a revolution — “Not a joke. Not a joke.” — then maybe things will have to “fundamentally change” for rich people.