the criticisms of biden's record on women's rights are more substantive and more real, and i'm not sure what the right analysis is on it.

i'm not old enough to remember, and i won't pretend i was, but somebody that this argument comes up around quite a bit is john lennon. it's easy to point to certain pieces of evidence and argue that he was a misogynistic piece of shit, and it's not even like i want to argue with you. but, the fact is that almost all of the men of his generation were misogynistic pieces of shit, because the culture was inherently misogynistic and inherently shitty. and, despite being an asshole himself, lennon was also responsible for helping to reverse the situation. so, do you nail him for what he did in his youth, or do you praise him for what he did in middle age (and wonder what he'd do in old age)?

in a sense, it's kind of like criticizing an abolitionist for inheriting slaves. you wake up in a culture, and things are the way they are; it's not like you decided that they'd be that way, and if you inherit something then it becomes yours, whether you like it or not. but, if you're supporting abolition eventually, even if it takes you until the age of 50 to see it, then you're fighting for the end of the oppression. cusps are complicated, like that.

the truth is that biden lived through a change that most of us take for granted at this point (and really shouldn't) and that he had to adjust to it as it was happening. so, you have to analyze how he adjusted rather than where he started from. and, sure: maybe he's even still adjusting. maybe he'll never really let it go, in the end.

debates don't like subtlety...

i think it's biden's responsibility to do two things to help younger people that have never known the world he grew up in through anything but black and white movies and assigned novels in schools understand what living through the cusp of women's rights was actually like. the first thing he has to do is acknowledge the past, and maybe he does that by actually explaining it. and, then he has to carefully point to things he eventually did right, while acknowledging the things he did wrong.

but, i think that the actual problem for biden in these exchanges may be less when it comes to female voters explicitly (in a primary, you also have rural and southern democrats to appeal to, and the women are not so pro-choice or so pro-labour, something senators from new york and california might not be as cognizant of as they should be but senators from delaware might have a better understanding of) and more about how blockfooted he seemed on the response. he looked like a deer caught in headlights, but it was an expression of a broader mannerism. sanders is old, but he hasn't really aged in 20 years. he's "grumpy", but he's not slow on the response, and he's not adopting the body language of a toddler the way that so many older people do when they get past a certain point. biden has slowed down a lot, and you can really tell, it's visibly obvious in the footage. the exchange made him seem past his prime in more ways than one.

and, i need to really state this pretty assertively: it's not "ageism" to argue that somebody in their late 70s and that is showing crystal clear signs of decline should be at home and preparing for end of life with his loved ones, rather than parading around running for president.