A ‘deplorables’ moment for Joe
JOE Biden’s disastrous interview with black radio host Charlamagne Tha God on Friday encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party and its presidential hopeful.
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, you ain’t black,” the former vice president blurted out at the end of the interview.
It was a statement so staggeringly, primitively racist, that it landed like a gut punch to many black Americans, of all political persuasions, who took to the airwaves to denounce it over the weekend.
“It played into the long-standing notion that the black vote is uncritical and guaranteed,” said left-wing writer Roxane Gay.
Former NFL player Jack Brewer declared “the mask is off.”
“Pure unadulterated hubris, the taking for granted of the black vote,” said ex-Bernie Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner, one of many who took issue with Biden’s patronizing use of the ungrammatical “ain’t.”
Attempts by the Biden campaign to claim the comment was made “in jest” were futile, even as Democratic-friendly media such as CNN ignored the story.
Biden’s attempt at damage control also fell flat. Perhaps he was “too cavalier,” he mused, and shouldn’t have been a “wise guy.”
Neither of those descriptions is accurate. Biden clearly was annoyed by abrasive questions from Charlamagne, whose breakfast show attracts more than 4 million young black listeners.
Biden’s irritation had been building since the opening question about “your cognitive health. I don’t think everything’s working upstairs.”
The 17-minute interview descended into a series of shouted monologues from Biden, complete with “Come on, man” and “get a life” outbursts.
It was not a friendly affair.
“A lot of black voters, including myself, feel . . . that Democrats take black voters for granted,” was one question that set Biden off on a 900word rant about his prowess in winning black votes, which only ended when a staffer off-camera tried to cut the interview short.
His staff could see the danger signs, but Biden was on a roll.
As we have seen with his “Hey, fat” and “lying dog-faced pony soldier” outbursts on the campaign trail, Biden is quick to anger and embellishes his achievements when challenged.
For instance, he told Charlamagne: “The NAACP has endorsed me every time I’ve run.”
But the NAACP issued a denial, saying it “does not endorse candidates for political office.”
Biden also said: “I come from a state with the eighth largest black population in America.” But Delaware has just 220,000 black residents, ranking in bottom one-third of states.
Another exchange captured Biden’s odd mix of aggrieved passivity.
“I’m wondering, how are you going to energize people and win a campaign from [your] house?” asked Charlamagne, kindly not mentioning the word “basement.”
The astonishing response from the man who aspires to be leader of the free world was that he is just doing what he was told: “I’m following the rules, man . . . My governor says he doesn’t want us out. I haven’t been out. I wear my mask. I have a mask. I got Secret Service outside. I walk outside. I have it on.”
The interview was a train crash. And, as his staff anticipated, it was always going to end in tears.
“Ain’t black” is Biden’s “deplorables” moment. Yet his supporters seem oblivious to the lethal blow it has delivered to his prospects, just as Hillary Clinton didn’t comprehend the catastrophe of her “basket of deplorables” insult to half of America in 2016.
Biden confirmed what Candace Owens’ “Blexit” movement is all about, the exit by black Americans from a Democratic Party that takes their vote for granted and traps them in a victim narrative.
Of all the rebukes to Biden over the weekend, probably the most eloquent came from Tim Scott, the Senate’s only black Republican, who pointed out to ABC that 1.3 million African Americans voted for Trump in 2016.
“Joe Biden told every single one of us we ‘ain’t black’ . . . It sends the wrong message to the young people of this nation that you have to stay in line or you’re not black enough . . . I remember being a kid in high school with people putting labels on me, whether I was an ‘Oreo,’ or someone who did not quite fit in.”
Scott said Biden should be judged on his 1994 crime bill, which included a mandatory life sentence for repeat offenders and “locked up more African-American men than any other crime bill in the last 50 years.”
He also raised Biden’s telling history of racial gaffes, including his comment: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
Scott asked: “Is that to suggest that every single kid in America that’s living in poverty, like the poverty I grew up in, has to be black?”
Biden’s internal filter has always been faulty, but lately it has deserted him entirely.
His latest id-explosion narrows his options for a running mate, after he already locked himself into choosing a woman. Now, as Charlamagne says, the only way to atone is to choose a black woman.
Nursing Biden over the finish line looks increasingly precarious for the Dems.