Den stora samlingstråden om Joe Biden

By August 1987, Biden's campaign, whose messaging was confused due to staff rivalries,[20]:108–109 had begun to lag behind those of Michael Dukakis and Dick Gephardt,[81] though he had still raised more funds than any candidate but Dukakis, and was seeing an upturn in Iowa polls.[82][20]:83 In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech that had been made earlier that year by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.[83] Kinnock's speech included the lines:

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?

While Biden's speech included the lines:

I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?

Biden had in fact cited Kinnock as the source for the formulation on previous occasions.[84][85] But he made no reference to the original source at the August 23 Democratic debate at the Iowa State Fair being reported on,[67]:230–232 or in an August 26 interview with the National Education Association.[85] Moreover, while political speeches often appropriate ideas and language from each other, Biden's use came under more scrutiny because he changed aspects of his own family's background to match Kinnock's.[17][86] Biden was soon found to have lifted passages from a 1967 speech by Robert F. Kennedy earlier that year (for which his aides took the blame), and a short phrase from the 1961 inaugural address of John F. Kennedy; and to have done the same with a 1976 passage from Hubert H. Humphrey two years earlier.[87]

A few days later, Biden's plagiarism incident in law school came to public light.[27] Video was also released showing that when earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, he had said he graduated in the "top half" of his class, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, and that he had received three degrees in college,[26][88] each of which was untrue or an exaggeration.[26] Advisers and reporters pointed out that he falsely claimed to have marched in the civil rights movement.[89]