Black votes matter

The Biden camp has plenty of excuses for the Democratic nominee’s remark back in May to a Black radio show host’s audience that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”

The former vice president has walked the comment back, saying he “shouldn’t have been such a wise guy,” and “it was really unfortunate” because all he was trying to do was put his record against Trump’s.

His defenders call that an apology, but it’s not the genuine article.

Joe Biden isn’t sorry for what he said, because he believes it. Because expectations of Black voter fidelity are deeply ingrained in his 47 years of pledged Democratic allegiance.

This isn’t even really a gaffe. In his mind, he was simply stating the obvious. Black voters vote Democrat, period. Right?

Those who don’t, well, they’ve essentially become transracial. Blacks whose minds won’t conform to Democratic thinking on political issues must renounce their own race, at least for election purposes.

Fifty-seven years ago last week, one of the iconic voices for civil rights championed content of character over skin color. In his dream for his children, Martin Luther King Jr. hoped for a nation that relegated race subordinate to soul, and lifted up mental attributes and qualities above complexion.

In his revelatory and unrehearsed candor, Biden reversed that order, because his party considers Black ballots being “in the bag” as the natural order of things. Thus a Black who might support Donald Trump is a disruptive mutation, an aberration, the only remedy for which must be more indoctrination to Biden and the party’s “record.”

After all, Biden went on to say in his interview, he extended voting rights countless times in the Senate. Black leaders have overwhelmingly supported him. The NAACP has always endorsed him.

“I mean, come on,” he concluded his litany with. He might as well have said “duh.”

And therein lies a prime Democratic

party problem — equating creation of government programs with solutions.

Biden’s own stated reasons for explanation of his offensive remark all centered around politics, policy and the political arena — spoken in past tense, as though Blacks owe him support in November for things he did years ago. He focused on goings-on inside the Beltway, not out in the streets.

His “what matters” metrics all align more with Black votes than Black lives.

Democrats have seen Trump making inroads with Blacks and their initial instinct is derisive dismissal, like Biden quipped. The old presumption that Black votes are basically duebills, earned and entitled because he and the party have always given lip service and legislative backing to every Black cause, is starting to expose a disconnect.

What more and more voters of color are questioning is this: Who cares about “support” at the top if it doesn’t produce positive results and progress at the bottom?

A half-century of Washington-based proclamations and legislation haven’t improved the ills that continue to disproportionately plague concentrated communities of color: crime, fatherless families, education underperformance, poverty.

Naturally, liberal lawmakers are loath to blame their own policies, and even more so to change or abandon them. Blaming racism fans more flames anyway, and preserves the skin-color-divide advantage that Democrats rely on.

Biden said what he did so casually because he is truly taken aback by any erosion of Black support.

Yet more rank-and-file Blacks are waking up from Democrat-induced dependency to rightly assess what they’ve gotten — and what they haven’t — in exchange for decades of blind devotion. It’s nigh impossible to achieve the American dream when a local population is dominated by violent lawlessness, unwed motherhood, illiteracy and unemployment.

No amount of national legislation or Black leadership support or NAACP endorsements matter if, at the end of a 47-year political career like Biden’s, those conditions — which make life improvements unattainable — persist for too many Black people in too many areas.

How do additional SNAP dollars benefit needy families when those dollars are routinely stolen or extorted in gang-ridden neighborhoods?

What people in predominantly Black communities need more than anything are gains in quality-of-life-criteria measures.

Black unemployment rates reaching historic lows and black wages rising — both declared and achieved goals of the Trump presidency — are benchmarks indicating real advances in things that matter.

Opportunity zone incentives, First Step Act second chances, and increased federal dollars for historically Black colleges and universities are several Trump administration examples of ground-level actions that speak louder than rhetoric.

Some Black voters are taking notice. A Hill-HarrisX poll taken during the Republican convention, which showcased a large array of minority speakers, reported a nine-point surge among Blacks in Trump’s approval rating to 24%.

Could this be the year that Blacks disenchanted with Democratic complacency decide to stop being taken for granted as a done-deal voting bloc?

The “Black vote” is still in Biden and the Democrats’ pocket nationally. But because Trump has made improving dialogue with Blacks a presidential and party priority (for which most Republicans do not thank him enough), that pocket is no longer zipped up as tight.

And the “ain’t Black” segment that’s starting to slip out is growing.