Hello, it's Mady here. This month we're taking a minute or so before each show to invite you to become a member of our podcast.

This is an era of unprecedented attacks on the freedom of the press from the commander in chief.

The media is under assault from this president like never before. Now is the time we all need to get behind journalists, media organizations that are trying to do their jobs, report the news, get to the truth.

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Last June on the day the Supreme Court upheld Donald Trump's Muslim ban. We interviewed the first Muslim American Congressman Keith Ellison and emotional, I think, important conversation about what it meant to him to see his faith under attack in his own country from the highest court in the land. And when the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court back in October, we were there just minutes after the final gavel with a panel of journalists and activists to discuss what it meant for the US, what it meant for the US.

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He's the guy who is so familiar. He is the middle of the road. I take the train, Amtrak, Delaware, Folksea, Aushucks, not a woman, not a person of color, not gay.

He's all the things that revert back to who historically had always had the grip on power. And the reassurance that that kind of person might still have the grip on power.

Welcome to Deconstructed. I'm Eddie Hassan. Is Joe Biden really the person to lead the Democrats to victory come November 2020? Is he the man who can beat Donald Trump and reach the parts of the Trump electorate that other Democrats can't?

Who is that just a bunch of dangerous nonsense?

I think it is patently absurd the notion that he thinks he's the future of a party, where in fact he's been one of the backbone of it for the better part of five decades.

That's my guest, the acclaimed writer and author, Rebecca Traster. We'll be talking about Biden's awful record in office, as well as his mastery of misjudgment.

So on today's show, get ready. It's the case against former vice president Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. And yeah, that's really his middle name.

I know how to make government work.

Not because I've talked or treated about it, but because I've done it, I've worked across the aisle to reach consensus, to help make government work in the past.

I can do that again with your help. For me, for me, to me, our principles must never be compromised, but compromise itself is not a dirty word.

That was former vice president Joe Biden speaking at a rally in Philadelphia on Saturday and formally announcing the launch of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

He's been the favorite for a while and has been consistently leading in the polls for several months now, which is kind of odd in some ways given he's a 76 year old white dude with very few actual policies in a party that's been getting younger, more female and increasingly non-white in recent years.

Then there's his tendency to make gaffes his mastery of misjudgment. He's just a small selection of things he said in the past couple of months alone, starting with his failure to apologize to Anita Hill for throwing her under the bus in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings he chaired back in 1991.

I'm sorry the way she got treated. If you go back and look what I said and didn't say, I don't think I treated her badly.

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