Former Vice President Joe Biden is far from the only Democratic presidential contender to use statistics and phrases for campaign texts without citation.
According to Politico, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) lifted a phrase from Everytown For Gun Safety; former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) is using a line similar to one President Barack Obama wrote on voting; Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) ripped off John Legend on African American incarceration rates.
But of course, even a whiff of plagiarism is bound to put the Biden campaign on edge after the debacle of his 1988 run.
YAWNNNNN!!! Is this a real nothingburger? Or is it a decoy/
Whiff or no whiff, “plagiarism” is too strong a word for what actually happened.
Well, I’m sure that in this New Age of Journalistic Precision and Integrity, even Republicans will be subject to The New Scrutiny.
Trump will never again get away with a campaign like the one he ran last time.
It would seem to fit according to the dictionary definition.
“Using stats without citation” is rather different than “copying sections of text verbatim”.
When a person is accused of the latter, it’s not entirely honest to offer up a defense as if he were accused of the former.
The reason why this sticks to Biden is simple — BIden cares more about smokestacks (i.e. the “white working class men” who work in the factories that have smokestacks) than curtailing carbon emissions, and any climate change policy is inevitably a cut and paste job put together in a rush by some staffer.
so while some other candidates might inadvertently forget a citation, because Biden’s proposal is wholly the result of staff work there is no foundation on which policies are built, and you get this hodgepodge of other people’s ideas, and other people’s phrasings.