Biden is getting a raw deal on race that epitomizes the ambitious nobodies claiming that each should have the Democratic nod to run against Trump. The bombs being tossed at Biden assure a 2020 loss to the President unless the incoming ordnance stops. He is the front-runner and will remain so.
The explosions arose because at a fundraiser Biden said that he personally got along with two racist Senators whose positions on race were anathema to him. His brief remarks are being subject to microscopic examination as though they were the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Biden detractors theorize that talking to political opponents serving in the Senate with Biden both validated them and and constituted tacit approval of their political views on race. If Lyndon Johnson had adopted that theory the 1964 Civil Rights Act would never have been.
This stupid theory has it that a fellow legislator with whom you disagree gets stomped, period.
On Saturday June 22, NPR carried a piece by a journalist who spoke to numerous African American voters attending congressman Jim Clyburn’s South Carolina fish fry along with 20 (yep, twenty) Democrats and one independent who can’t be bothered to join the Democratic Party he seeks to represent.
After many hours and numerous interviews, the NPR reporter could not find one person who thought that Biden’s remarks inhibited their support. The most she got was “maybe” he shouldn’t have said it, but it didn’t make any difference.
But what the reporter did get was a virtually unanimous opinion from the fish fryers that fighting among the candidates was bad for the cause and had to stop.
The Biden stomp these jerks are selling is just an example of ageism. Because Biden comes from a time when political opponents were civil and did not proceed from a place of personal hatred, he’s a has-been who lacks the muscle to hate the way the young folks do these days.
This diseased view is the direct result of the mother’s milk of today’s politics: cable news. These people grew up listening to the yelling and invective heard on Fox, MSNBC, and yes, even boring CNN and that’s the way they conduct themselves in seeking political office and as electeds.
They love it.
But the electorate does not.
It’s a fair comment that Trump is the ur-example of screaming invectives. But he’s the President with a loyal following of supporters who relish his excess and he’s the one that the Democrats have to defeat.
The Democratic candidate for President will never make inroads in the Trump folllowers. But I suspect that the majority of American voters will prize a Democratic candidate who is right on the issues. This week’s attack on Biden is an unfortunate example of the worst excesses of some of the “new” Democrats.