Posted on 02/10/2020 12:46:08 PM PST by Red Badger
It wasn’t the first time he’s had an odd answer to a woman’s question.
A young female voter asked Joe Biden on Sunday why voters should believe he can win.
His response was rather unusual.
“You’re arguably the candidate with the greatest advantage in this race,” Madison Moore, a college student, said to Biden at a New Hampshire campaign event. “How do you explain the performance in Iowa, and why should the voters believe that you can win the national election?”
“Iowa’s a Democratic caucus,” the former vice president responded. “You ever been to a caucus?”
When Moore said she had, he responded, “No you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
The phrase immediately got attention, with many confused by Biden’s choice of words. As it turns out, “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is a phrase Biden has used before. He attributes it to John Wayne, though its actual provenance is somewhat unclear.
But for Moore, the problem wasn’t so much Biden’s word choice as the fact that he responded to her question by demanding whether she’d ever been to a caucus.
“Joe Biden has been performing incredibly poorly in this race,” Moore told the Washington Post. “His inability to answer a simple question from a nobody college student like me only exacerbates that reality.”
Biden has been criticized in the past for responding to questions — especially questions posed by women — in ways that seem condescending, as when he called moderator Lyz Lenz a “lovely person” after her question at a September LGBTQ rights forum. And the moment in New Hampshire was another reminder that while Biden’s responses may seem folksy or homespun to some, to others they’re a sign that he’s not always treating voters with the seriousness they deserve.
Biden has used “lying dog-faced pony soldier” before
Biden explained the provenance of “lying dog-faced pony soldier” at a North Dakota rally in 2018, saying that his brother loved to use lines from movies.
“There’s a line in a movie, a John Wayne movie, where the Indian chief turns to John Wayne and says, this is a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” Biden said.
It’s not clear if this line actually shows up in any John Wayne movie — as Matthew Dessem points out at Slate, there are 180 to sift through. The general consensus seems to be that Biden is probably thinking of the 1952 Tyrone Power film Pony Soldier, in which a character says, “The pony soldier speaks with a tongue of the snake that rattles.”
Whatever the case, Biden has used the line in the past when responding to questions. At an Iowa event in December, a young voter said that President Obama promised his father that he could keep his existing health plan after the passage of the Affordable Care Act — but, in fact, his dad wasn’t able to do so.
“Were you lying to my dad?” the voter asked.
“A lying dog-faced pony soldier. No,” Biden said, before acknowledging that some people were forced to change plans under the ACA.
When he used the phrase on Sunday, it felt like a bit of a left turn from Moore’s question. She had asked why voters should believe he could win, following his fourth-place finish in Iowa. His response was, apparently, to start explaining caucuses to her, assuming she’d never been to one.
As it happens, he was right — Moore later said in a statement to the Washington Post that she had never been to a caucus.
“I asked Joe Biden a fair question,” she wrote. “His immediate response was to question whether I had ever attended a caucus. In my nervousness in the presence of the former Vice President, I nodded yes.”
Whether she’d personally been to a caucus or not, she told the Post, was irrelevant to her question. It’s part of a pattern in his interactions with voters
The “lying dog-faced pony soldier” phrase itself was a joke, according to Biden campaign traveling national press secretary Remi Yamamoto.
But it wasn’t the first time Biden has faced scrutiny for his responses to questions.
In June, activist K.C. Cayo asked Biden about his stance on the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for most abortions (though he supported Hyde in the past, Biden now says he backs repeal of the amendment). Cayo, who uses they/them pronouns, and the two women activists with them, also asked Biden to protect sexual assault survivors. Advertisement
In response, Cayo wrote at Vice, Biden “leaned in very close to my face, and started wagging his finger at me,” saying, “Nobody has spoken about it, done more, or changed more than I have.”
“I wasn’t able to even finish my 30-second elevator pitch — I never got past the first sentence,” Cayo told Vice. “Just the fact that he wagged his finger at me in such a condescending manner is very telling.”
Then, at a forum on LGBTQ issues in September, moderator Lyz Lenz brought up Biden’s votes in favor of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. “You did vote to repeal both of those, but you have also praised Vice President Mike Pence as a ‘decent guy,’” Lenz noted.
“You’re a lovely person,” the former vice president responded.
.......MORE SPINNING AT LINK..................
Let me explain that moment. He is a mean old demented man.
Whether she had or not, Biden’s response was crude, insulting and incoherent. And he didn’t answer the question......................
It’s really weird when Biden is the most sensible.
I knew she was lying when she said she’d been to a caucus and she’s too stupid to realize familiarity with the caucus process could be relevant to Biden’s excuses for losing.
Pox is just that. A cross between smallpox and filth. The three rich far left wing investors of pox are also alternative lifestyle types
Ol’ lunch-pail Joe. Bit of a belligerent SOB, isn’t he? Maybe especially with women.
Savage used to have a good saying that seems to fit someone like Joe,
“He probably wears those sleavless undershirts, you know. So his arms can swing more freely while he beats his wife.”
Joe is just a loud mouth and a crook. He’s on his way out, now, and hopefully to jail.
Thats right!!! Its in 2 diff movies. Tie a yellow Ribbon and Pony Trail.
Democrats continue to unwise trend of insulting the voters directly and indirectly. Deplorable, irredeemable, racists, dog-whistlers, bible clutching gun lovers, dog-faced pony soldiers and so on...
Why are you calling her stupid. You dont even know if she was eligible to vote in 2016.
She was caught off guard by an asinine question to her, belligerently asked by what she thought was a candidate.
What possible difference could it make whether she, from a non-caucus state had ever been to one, as to his crappy performance?
He was deflecting from his failure with a jackass question he figured she might NOT answer truthfully, since that would just let him off the hook with a smart-aleck response.
The dork is a loser and abuser.
Right. Indians hunting other Indians were traitors and that is what Biden was saying. This might be the most coherent thing he has said lately!
So, she didn’t pass the “sniff test”?
Calling a young woman dog-faced would IMMEDIATELY end the campaign of ANY Republican.
The Dems have a different set of rules...................
canine virus has struck certain people the past few days...
I wonder if lying dog faced pony soldiers can code? You got to love this guy - come on new Hampshire let’s keep this going. Go Joe go! Don’t call it a come back, he has been here 4 years. Joe’s gonna knock you out!OBammy said Joe drop out
For a pathological liar, Gropin’Joe sure likes calling people liars.
Yeah, I hear it’s a bitch...............
I see what’s going on here. Gropin’ Joe wants us to think he’s a manly man because he watched John Wayne movies back in the day.
I wish I could remember but I learned something the other day that showed VOX just downright makes up lies. Wish I could remember. It was VOX on election night that claimed exit polls showed Trump getting slaughtered. I remember people in my office saying “Trump is finished”.
Thing is: He called her that.
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