Biden announced he was dropping out of the race on Sept. 24, 1987. (To make things even, Biden later jokingly gave Kinnock some of his speeches to use “with or without attribution” during a January 1988 trip to Europe.) About twenty years later, in his 2008 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, he wrote that the plagiarism scandal was his own fault. “When I stopped trying to explain to everybody and thought it through, the blame fell totally on me,” he wrote. “Maybe the reporters traveling with me had seen me credit Kinnock over and over, but it was Joe Biden who forgot to credit Kinnock at the State Fair debate.”
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00:00There's one more, and then you can. Now, Mr. Byte.
00:05Thank you very much. I'm proud to be with these six other people up here. We agree much
00:13more than we disagree. I was trying to think how I'd close here today, and it seems to
00:18me there's two things that come through very clearly. Number one, the United States economy
00:24has to be revitalized, not just for the sake of America, but for the sake of the whole
00:28world. We are the world's last, best hope. If our economy fades, will Japan take over
00:36the protection of the free world? Will our European allies do that? The answer is clearly
00:41no. We must succeed not only for ourselves, but for the world.
00:45The second point that comes clear to me is that the Democratic Party, the Democratic
00:50Party has always stood for growth and for hope, and somehow that's been lost for a while
00:55in the minds of the public and maybe even among those of us in the party. And I started
00:59thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family
01:06ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife who's sitting out there in the audience
01:11is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were
01:17not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college
01:22and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest? Those same people who read poetry
01:28and wrote poetry and taught me how to sing verse? Is it because they didn't work hard?
01:35My ancestors who worked in the coal mines in northeast Pennsylvania didn't come up after
01:3812 hours and play football for four hours? No, it's not because they weren't as smart.
01:44It's not because they didn't work as hard. It's because they didn't have a platform upon
01:49which to stand. That's what my party's always been about. We provide people a platform upon
01:56which to stand. That's what government is for. And ladies and gentlemen, there's an
02:01old communion hymn in my church and it goes like this. It says, and he will raise you
02:06up on eagle's wings and bear you on the breath of dawn and make the sun to shine on you.
02:12It's time to build a platform upon which we can raise America up on eagle's wings and
02:17bring a breath of a new dawn over parts of America that have been left behind and shed
02:21light on people who need our help. This is an exciting time to be in our business and
02:27no better time to be president. I hope you'll consider me. Thank you very much.
02:31And that concludes the Economics for America debate. Now you can let go. Show the candidates
02:39who do appreciate the fact that they were here, took part in this debate.