A little taste of Joe Biden’s history

If the chatter out of D.C. is any indication, the current Democratic VP front-runner is Senator Joe Biden.  There are some folks who find him pretty distasteful (Melissa McEwan, for example), but the consensus in the liberal blogosphere seems to be that of the likely choices (his competitors are Tim Kaine and Evan Byah), Biden is probably the best.  Ezra Klein’s June post on Biden is probably the best take I’ve read on the possibility of an Obama/Biden ticket, and you should definitely read it.  But I want to highlight another aspect of Biden, and one which I don’t think enough people are aware of.  

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog reminds us that Biden was a major force in passing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, and it’s various revisions over the years.  As the Wikipedia article shows, the act is actually a pretty remarkable piece of legislation:

Since that time–through the Office of Violence Against Women at the U.S. Justice Department, and the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services–VAWA has provided over $4 billion dollars to combat domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault nationwide. The Violence Against Women Act’s programs range from policies to encourage the prosecution of abusers, to victim’s services to prevention programs. VAWA helped forge new alliances between police officers, courts, and victim advocates.

Biden certainly isn’t perfect – like others have mentioned, he’s gaffe prone and in thrall to the credit card industry – but he has done a lot of good with his time in the Senate, and it’s worth keeping that in mind.