I think Biden’s comments about James Eastland were a “senior moment.” That would be all the more reason to use them against him. His time has passed.

Eastland was not just a segregationist. He was one of the worst of the pack, outspoken in ways that ordinary racists like Strom Thurmond were not.

During World War II, Eastland vocally opposed and degraded the service of African American soldiers in the war. He incited protests and comparisons to Hitlerism following a vitriolic speech on the floor of the Senate in July 1945, in which he complained that the Negro soldier was physically, morally, and mentally incapable of serving in combat. In contrast, Eastland claimed that the “boys from the South were fighting to maintain white supremacy.”

Earlier on 1944, Eastland claimed the “Negro race” was an inferior race:

I have no prejudice in my heart, but the white race is the superior race and the Negro race an inferior race and the races must be kept separate.

The same year he protested against Smith v. Allwright, which banned White primaries:

This decision reveals an alarming tendency to destroy the sovereignty of the states. Our supreme court is usurping the legislative function, and Congress may yet prove the last citadel of constitutional government.

When the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Eastland, like most Southern Democrats, denounced it. In a speech given in Senatobia, Mississippi on August 12, 1955, he announced:

On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court’s decision. You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent sociological considerations.