Biden says Romney in ‘time warp’ on women, mocks ‘binders’ remark

Vice President Joe Biden carried on the Democratic ticket’s full-court press for the women’s vote Wednesday, calling Mitt Romney’s answer to a debate question on equal pay “sketchy” and mocking his comment about using “binders full of women” when naming officials in his Massachusetts Cabinet.
“Folks, the idea he needed to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house,” Biden told an audience in Greeley, Colo. “He didn’t need a binder.”

Biden invoked his daughter and granddaughters, as well as President Obama’s two daughters, to say the two of them believed “to our core” that women are entitled to “every single, solitary opportunity; every single, solitary thing my sons are and my grandsons are, without exception.”

Biden listed other areas in which he said Republican policies would hurt women, from repealing the 2010 healthcare reform law to ending funding for Planned Parenthood.

“Look, talk about being out of touch. It’s not just the Swiss bank accounts and the Cayman Islands,” he said, referring to Romney’s personal finances. “What I can’t understand is how he has gotten into this sort of 1950s time warp in terms of women.”

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In his first campaign stop this year in the Rocky Mountain State, Biden also attacked the Republicans on immigration, mocking Romney’s call for “self-deportation” during Tuesday night’s debate.

“Whoa! Every 13-year-old, get up and move, man,” he said sarcastically. “I don’t know where he lives.”

Biden said that the Obama whom voters saw in the second debate was “the man I have sat with every day, … a man of principle, a man of gumption, a man of steady hand and a clear vision.”

He closed his remarks in the same way Obama did in the debate: by attacking Romney for his comments at a secretly videotaped fundraiser that 47% of Americans were dependent on government, consider themselves victims and thus support the president.

“That 47% and more should worry about Romney, because he doesn’t have any idea who they are,” said Biden, who debated last week with Romney’s vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

“The American people are so much better,” Biden said. “They’re so much stronger. They take so much more responsibility than these guys even begin to understand. I’ve never seen two candidates for the two highest public offices in the land more negative about the state of the country.”

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michael.memoli@latimes.com

Twitter: @mikememoli