AN UNEXPECTED BIT OF GOOD NEWS: Biden Echoes Libertarians’ Call on Occupational Licensing.

“You know if you are a hair braider, you braid people’s hair, you have to get a license to do something like 400 hours of training,” he said before pausing, admitting he should be “more careful” with his words, and concluding that licensing requirements were part of a greater unseen effort “not to help the worker.”

The union crowd in Washington, D.C., gave the gaffe-prone politician a laugh, and three weeks later at his presidential campaign kickoff, Biden recycled the talking point.

“Why should someone who braids hair have to get 600 hours of training? It makes no sense,” he told another labor crowd, this one packed into a union hall in Pittsburgh. “They’re making it harder and harder in a whole range of professions, all to keep competition down.”

Why, Biden continued, should unionized pipefitters, firefighters, and steelworkers care about “getting rid of these unnecessary hoops out there? Because we have to restore America’s ability and individual American’s ability to fight for their own dignity.”

The union members in the crowd and the workers standing behind the candidate applauded again — reliably Democratic voters all cheering the kind of government deregulation that has been the pet project of libertarian billionaires like Charles and David Koch for half a decade. It was a moment of pragmatic centrism.

Ball’s in your court, GOP — are you going to let Joe Biden get to your right on an economic liberty issue?