Vice President Joe Biden delivered an amazing, motivating, uproarious address to the NAACP for about 30 minutes today, saying the November 2012 election will come to “character, conviction, and vision.” The 69-year old former U.S. Senator from Delaware was, like Mitt Romney yesterday, booed — but only for saying he was wrapping up his speech. Watch Biden’s entire speech below, and be sure to catch the amazing final few minutes.
“Biden spelled out further differences between Obama’s campaign and Romney’s on health care, the environment, equal pay for women and education. He claimed Romney’s tax reforms are skewed for the wealthy at the expense of domestic programs that help less affluent people. Biden asserted more than 2 million black Americans will see their taxes go up under the tax plan Romney is proposing,” NPR reported:
As NPR’s Liz Halloran reports, when Romney yesterday said President Obama blamed the rich for economic problems and contrasted his own efforts as helping the middle class: “The audience reaction? Crickets.”
But Biden’s hugest response came on voter ID laws, a subject the civil rights group is keenly tracking. Romney did not address the matter yesterday. After discussing the NAACP’s long history of fighting for African Americans’ right to vote, Biden queried, “did you think we’d be fighting these battles again?”
Biden said ballot access should be “expanded and unencumbered”. Then he recalled his years in the Senate, where he worked with the GOP on voting issues like motor voter, early voting and voting by mail. But times have changed, he said, adding: “This ain’t your father’s Republican party.”
The vice president concluded by urging convention delegates to imagine a changed Justice Department under a President Romney. And he warned Romney would make substantial changes to the Supreme Court.