Joe Biden puts his foot in his mouth and demonstrates a significant problem for his campaign, the Democratic Party, and left-leaning media organizations.
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Yesterday, a white politician as much as declared he and his party own the black vote, going so far as to suggest that any African American who doesn’t vote for him is not truly black. No, this wasn’t a racially insensitive comment from the current President, but instead a statement from his Democratic challenger.
“If you’ve got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”
-Joe Biden
Biden very quickly attempted to walk back his comments, saying he “should not have been so cavalier” in the way he spoke of his currently very high support among the African American community. But this gaffe demonstrates a significant problem for Biden, the Democratic Party, and left-leaning media organizations.
The past four years have been characterized by a constant fever pitch over statements and actions from Donald Trump deemed as politically incorrect, racially insensitive, and even outright racist. Every gaffe and every impropriety has been immediately seized upon and used as evidence to support a narrative that paints the President as an unapologetic racist with a clear white nationalist agenda.
Whether or not this narrative has any kernel of truth, it becomes difficult to maintain its efficacy if Democrats and their supporters use one standard for Donald Trump and another for Joe Biden.
As always, the problem with an outrage narrative is the inherent inconsistency in arguments that have their basis in emotion.
If you already believe from the depths of your soul that Trump is a racist, you’re going to interpret even the most innocent of gaffes as proof of that belief. And, you’ll shout angrily from the rooftops the facts as you see them.
But because you don’t believe Biden could possibly be racist, the emotional response will be absent even if he were to utter something truly abhorrent. Your instinct wouldn’t be to angrily condemn, but to obfuscate and spin (as we are currently seeing in spades).
This episode once again demonstrates the Democratic ineptitude in the face of the Trump moment. Donald Trump’s modus operandi has been to troll the Democrats, and their supporters in the media, into responding with spittle inducing outrage, after which he has only to wait for the inevitable episode of hypocrisy from Democrats who fail to hold their own to the standards they demand from others.
The quandary the Democratic Party faces is unique, difficult, and one of their own making. They have spent the last four years signaling their “wokeness” in the face of a President they feel is truly racist, but must now find a way to propel an old-school Democrat from a very different era of political correctness across the finish line. How they can do so without confirming Trump’s assertion of dual-standard hypocrisy is anyone’s guess.
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