Delete Your Account: MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wonders If McConnell Is Better or Worse Than Segregationist Senators

The hot takes we’ve gotten from Democrats in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s praise of his ability to get along with segregationist Senators in the 1970s have been all over the map.

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said in an interview Thursday that Biden’s comments on Democratic Sens. James Eastland (MS) and Herman Talmadge (GA) were not that big a deal in the scheme of things. Why? Because Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) were “pretty stinky, creepy people themselves” and Democratic Senators like Biden critic Cory Booker (NJ) had to work with them, too, she stated.

Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) ripped Biden’s remarks, suggesting he was “coddling the reputations of segregationists.” On the other hand, civil rights icons and Congressmen John Lewis (D-GA) and James Clyburn (D-SC) both defended Biden, saying they had to work with some pretty bad people back in those days, too.

MSNBC‘s “All In” host Chris Hayes had his own special take on it all in the midst of the controversy, and took to the Twitter machine to wonder out loud:

Something I’ve been mulling since Biden’s comments yesterday, whether a US Senate effectively run by men like James Eastland and John Stennis is or is not preferable to a US Senate run by Mitch McConnell?

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 20, 2019

He followed up with a little bit of “WhatAboutBothism”, perhaps in an attempt to make his initial tweet sound more… measured:

Another war of saying this is: the Senate has always been bad.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 20, 2019

Twitter being Twitter, there was actually a debate between liberals in the comments:

I think they were pretty different, each pretty awful in different ways.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 20, 2019

Is there a difference? Here’s Eastland bragging about having JFK’s “whole program bottled up.” No different from McConnell being the “grim reaper.”

This is another way Biden’s “civility” argument is wrong. Eastland didn’t work with LBJ, he lost to him. https://t.co/9h3FS1EkSx pic.twitter.com/WYj3UUKwth

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 20, 2019

Not preferable. Check out these comments I dug up from Eastland and Talmadge calling civil rights activists the enemy in every conceivable way: https://t.co/akFLXIW9on

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) June 20, 2019

But that is just the story of the evolution of both the Senate and America.

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) June 20, 2019

Mitch McConnell is a racist. He doesn’t have to say the words; it’s in his deeds, his actions, his politics. Election security is but one example.

— Jodi Jacobson (@jljacobson) June 21, 2019

It has always been a reactionary institution. The Senate was a better place with the likes of Eastland & Stennis – despite their abhorrent views on race. Unlike McConnell, they were committed to having the Senate be a productive house of the national legislature.

— Dennis P. Crawford (@DennisPCrawford) June 21, 2019

In the end, there was no clear winner in the debate. But there was one casualty: Common sense.

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—Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–

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