Joe Biden yells at and threatens union worker over the 2nd Amendment

Joe Biden at the Mack Assembly plant in Michigan. Reuters.

Joe Biden swore and yelled at a union worker at a Michigan auto plant in an argument over gun rights. Reuters. The worker accused Biden of being against the 2nd amendment and said that by putting Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke in power as a "gun czar" he would be coming for guns. Biden said the man was "full of shit" and a "horses ass". Biden also demonstrated a lack of knowledge of weapons claiming the popular AR-15 rifle was fully automatic and referring to the gun as an AR-14 and admitting he would ban it. He also invited the man to step outside before his aides made him move on. The outburst raises further concerns about Biden's mental state as he has gotten into several gaffes recently, including calling a young voter a "dog faced pony solider".

WATCH: "You’re full of sh*t," @JoeBiden tells a man who accused him of "actively trying to end our Second Amendment right."

"I support the Second Amendment," Biden adds while vising under-construction auto plant in Detroit. @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/sueOSBaY9P

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) March 10, 2020

My Comment:
Make sure you watch either the video in the Reuters piece or the quoted tweet above as the video is way worse than the Reuters article made it sound. Joe Biden got really aggressive with this man very quickly just for asking an admittedly confrontational but fairly standard question. There was no reason for Biden to just start yelling and swearing at the man, let alone starting to threaten him.

It's also very clear that Joe Biden doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to guns. Calling an AR-15 and AR-14 is the least of his problems, though I could forgive that as a slip of the tongue. But the rest? He's either lying deliberately about what an AR-15 is or he just doesn't know. An AR-15 is specifically NOT a machine gun as it only fires one round per pull of the trigger. And though 60 and 100 round AR magazines exist they are not standard or common like the 30 and 20 rounders are.

He's also talking through both sides of his mouth as you can't say you are not going to ban guns while at the same time saying you are going to ban AR-15's. You also can't say you support the 2nd amendment if you are at the same time planning on banning an entire class of guns. Biden does seem to realize that a full on confiscation scheme isn't going to work, but he can't deny he's coming at the right to buy guns.

And I think this is one of the reasons Biden was so angry at this man. He really is planning on coming after guns but he does not want more moderate voters to know that. The voter exposed him and Joe Biden didn't like it at all. He knows that gun control might play well in the primaries but is a huge disadvantage for him in the general and doesn't want general voters to know how extreme his position actually is.

I think this could be a "deplorable" moment for Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton famously said that half of Donald Trump's voters could be put in a "basket of deplorables" as they were all racist, sexist and otherwise terrible people. This strategy backfired on her immensely as it was hugely insulting, not only for the Trump voters she was trying to get to vote for her, but the friends and family of people who were supporting President Trump. I always thought it was this that cost her the election, though obviously she had a lot of other problems as well.

The one rule in politics is that you never insult the voters you are trying to reach and that's what Hillary Clinton did back in 2016 and now Joe Biden has done the same in 2020. Telling a voter (and a union member as well!) that he's full of shit for expressing a very common blue collar concern about all the Democratic candidates is going to hurt his chances in November. I am guessing that he probably changes a few minds at the Mack Assembly Plant who are probably going to side with their worker over Joe Biden.

This is a very obvious own-goal for the Biden campaign. This incident is going to fire up gun owners for sure and may even cause unions to reconsider him. I am sure the NRA is putting together an advertisement quoting Biden here, which is to be expected, but the union thing is probably more of a threat. Auto workers are already sliding towards President Trump since he has fought pretty hard for them and this incident will likely push them even further away, regardless of what their union leadership says.

I also think that this incident is another example that could be put in the evidence pile for Joe Biden's possibly senility. The vast majority of politicians know you never get into a shouting battle with a voter, but Biden either forgot or didn't care. Outbursts of disproportionate anger is a sign of senility and Biden sure expressed that here.

This incident, added with all the other strange, jumbled and just plain weird things he has said lately might not be conclusive evidence that Biden is going senile, but it a circumstantial case at the very least. Getting into fights with union workers, confusing his wife with his sister, even calling a voter a "dog faced pony soldier" are not the actions of a well man. Even if he isn't suffering from the early signs of Alzheimer's or another dementia disorder, there definitely something off with Joe Biden.

I don't think it will hurt Joe Biden that much in Michigan though. Bernie Sanders is on life support and it's not like he's all that much better on gun rights than Joe Biden is. There might be a few people so disgusted with Biden here that they will vote for Sanders today, but I can't see that number being enough to erase the huge leads Biden has shown in polling.