Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, acknowledged concerns about his support for a 1994 crime bill that critics say contributed to the mass incarceration of racial minorities in recent decades.
Speaking during a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) town hall event on systemic racism, Biden said questions about his role in writing the bill are “legitimate”. But he insisted that people should judge him based on his current actions, not his past.
He said that while he’s been “told all along” that young people oppose his past stances on criminal justice issues, “there is no polling evidence to sustain that. Nor is there voting evidence thus far to sustain that”.
“Watch what I do. Judge me based on what I do, what I say and to whom I say it,” he added.
