Joe Biden apologizes for saying black voters choosing between him and Trump 'ain't black'

What he said.

It’s pretty hard to make a case for Biden in 2020 which does not incorporate the words “Trump”, “Cheeto”, or “orange” so I am inclined to think that by the convention Biden will “voluntarily” step aside.

If it’s Bernie, that carries with it a set of issues.
If it’s Not-Bernie, that carries with it a different set of issues.

You’re welcome. I’ve been accused of pessimism before, so I’ll say as I did then: Give me a reason to be hopeful. I’ve watched this fucking country for 60 years and things are not getting better, only different. Or am I to believe that Biden is the hope of the future?

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Are you so convinced that nothing can get any better that you care not a whit about who he’ll pick as vp?

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Dude is an unapologetic son of the KKK. How is that difficult to understand.

Don’t hold your breath. Unless something weird happens, Biden will be the candidate. And no, non-scandals spun up by leftist twitterers and far-right Trumpist nutbags don’t count. A genuine, serious health crisis (not imaginary dementia) is just about the only thing that could make him step aside.

As for the case for Biden in 2020, have you looked at his policy goals and plans? https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/

While you obviously don’t have to agree with everything there, and I perfectly understand people who think it doesn’t go far enough on many subjects, that’s actually a remarkably left-leaning agenda for a Democratic presidential candidate.

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Actually, pretty much. The only thing that matters in this election is that Trump loses, and I am not at all convinced that he will or that he can. Remember 2016? Twitter, Facebook? Russia? Now, tell me things are getting better. Give me a reason to hope.

Yeah, and?

I got news for you. Everybody who doesn’t have the privilege of ignoring racial issues thinks about race. A lot.

The rules:

  1. Treat people how they want to be treated
  2. Listen to them and don’t talk over them

Sounds simple enough, right?

That is not one of the rules.

There are plenty of people who are happy to explain the deeper logic, if you’re willing to listen. Arguing with them, and trying to “win” a conversation that’s about them and that you really hold no stake in, will get you nowhere.

Because putting an article in front of the group name distances oneself from the group. Putting “people” after the group name draws one closer. It’s an artifact of language that was even around in Joe Biden’s time.

Try it out yourself with just about anything. It really works!

Sure they did. The only people confused by them were the people disingenuously wondering why black people (or, if they’re racist enough, the blacks) could say that word but white people can’t. Boom! College freshman republican mic drop!

When I grew up there were no home computers. There was no home internet until I was in high school, and even then it was something my family didn’t have access to. Cell phone use wasn’t widespread until I was in college, and I didn’t have one until after college. There were no smart phones until I was well into adulthood. So how am I posting this comment, if we’re supposed to be confused by and rigidly resistant to all the ways the world has changed since we were born?

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Gee, I wish there had been a candidate who spent the '60s marching for civil rights instead of trying to stop desegregation; one who said that our problems are not just Trump but the system that spawned him; one who could talk intelligently about issues without descending into stupid, unforced errors (" … then you ain’t black").

Oh, we DID! It was Bernie Sanders. And what a coincidence, the DNC fucking kneecapped him as good as if they’d used a power drill to turn his patella into a donut. Helped by the New York Times and WaPo, who spend more time on Bernie praising Cuba’s literacy programs 20 years ago than Biden’s money, his family’s disgusting nepotism, his voting record or his beliefs. (By the way, I don’t need Tara Reade to even exist to know Biden’s a shit candidate. But man, he got done some favors on that.) Bernie is bad for billionaires, and the NYT and WaPo – not coincidentally, owned by rich men – know that, and somehow that got turned into a argument for telling thousandaires to not vote for him because, hey, why upset the cart of rotten apples?

Because Biden, as a candidate, is neoliberal shit. He’ll officiate your gay wedding and then watch as you die in a gutter because you can’t pay a hospital bill. He’ll say you deserve a living wage but also spent years in Delaware, the America Cayman islands, helping companies and credit-card companies re-write bankruptcy laws to fuck you and help them. He’ll tell you his record was helping Obama, but aside from caving on Merrick Garland, getting took on Voter Suppression and getting as much of a money bump from Citizen’s United as they could while Republicans ran the fucking board on them, Obama’s record is one of failure and loss. But hey, we had a president who made you feel good – as opposed to, I don’t know, a president who did good things for all Americans.

I’ll vote for Biden. And if he wins, somehow, the Military budget will stay the same, the inequity in our society will remain the same, the exploitation of the poor and the undocumented will stay the same … but, hey, the tweets will be more reasonable.

When Biden loses in 2020, everyone who could have picked Sanders but didn’t because they don’t understand civilization and didn’t want their taxes to go up by 1%, even if it meant the top 1% would pay more, every single person who failed to support Sanders – the only candidate with a real platform and no kumbaya bulllllshit about a thousand narrow-spectrum small-demographic grievances who spoke intelligently and like an adult actually talking about money, power and equality – will be responsible for what will be the death of America.

Again, I’ll vote for Biden. As a Democrat, I’m used to supporting losers with no fight in them.
But one side of a shit, corrupt, money-hungry system isn’t going to beat an even shittier, more corrupt, better-funded side of the system.

It didn’t have to be like this.

But it is.

And we’ll keep losing as long as we play by their rules.

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The interviewer isn’t the one running for President.

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Even if Biden dies, it won’t be Bernie. His delegates will be freed up, but a majority of the newly-freed committed delegates will still feel obliged to support someone more moderate. Possibly Warren, but I wouldn’t count on it.

If it is not-Biden for reasons other than death or health-related withdrawal or similar, that will raise the most serious set of issues, since it will mean that the DNC really is the rule-ignoring set of boogeymen some conspiracy-theorists think it is.

I have. I also saw his policy goals and plans from a year ago. For a guy who got caught plagiarising years ago, he’s still claiming others’ ideas as his own without properly crediting them.

Seriously, I have zero confidence that the man whose core message is “let’s get back to normal” will follow through on even the tepid versions of the progressive promises he borrowed from Warren and Sanders. I’ll be voting for him and hope he beats Biff, but it’s not about him or his policies. All I want out of his campaign is that he doesn’t screw up and alienate voters, and that isn’t looking so good, either.

Spoken like a straight white male (at least a privilege-blind one). Ask a woman, an African-American, an LGBTQ person if things aren’t better for them in 2020 than they were in 1960. I’m disappointed Biden is the nominee in 2020, but with all his flaws I can see he’s better than his opponent (who’s still mired in a pre-1960 world).

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That’s not how hope works. You don’t get your reasons from others. Instead one holds onto hope in spite of people acting like you. That’s how hope works.

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Oh enough with that defeatist noise.

Our country has many profound, multi-generational problems that have been with us from the beginning. It also had many examples of hard-fought advances over the last 60 years.

60 years ago it was both legal and commonplace to deny people employment or access to basic services because they were non-white or non-male or LGBT. Some states still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books. Being gay was a crime. Being a woman meant having no legal recourse against sexual harassment or discrimination. Being black meant you were legally subhuman. If you were an elderly person who needed medical care you were pretty much screwed unless your family could afford the bills. I could go on.

None of those advances came under the leadership of ideal candidates or elected officials. They came because people fought tooth and nail to push their country forward, often laying down their lives in the process. To say “things are no better now” is to spit on their graves.

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And??? I’m just saying this interview is a lame exercise in pandering, and he’s just playing the game. Biden might as well have said if you’re voting for Trump you’re either insanely wealthy and love things how they are or you’re just a fucking racist/freedumb/idiot that sucks up to that kind of thinking. This is “gotcha” type news level one, I’m sure it will get worse.

Are there black people jewish people, gay people voting for Trump? Probably, but I would think a big majority are not. It’s this kind of hand ringing because we aren’t happy with the candidate that can only help him lose voters. I’d vote for an angry hyena at this point if it said “D” in front of it. Yeah I want better but obviously that’s out of my control.

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And there was Biden’s mistake, right there. Now watch him try to play Il Douche’s game of back-and-forth schoolyard insults with the same kind of results.

The Dem establishment has never learned that competing on your opponent’s terms is not a formula for success.

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If he spends his first 100 days in office implementing plans taken from the left, and doesn’t give anyone credit, then I’m still going to be happy. The trick is not to get complacent as well.

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I agree if Joe gets into that kind of boxing match it probably won’t end well. So many terrible Trump things to choose from but people are just numb to it, and worse the base loves it. I suppose if they had some heavy hitter conservatives crossing the aisle for Biden In regards to hammering home the dirt, that could be a factor. It will certainly be ugly.

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I’ll be happy, too. My point was that, as you say, those plans were indeed taken from the left (and without credit).

I’m also not confident that he will implement those plans, and not confident that his campaign won’t get complacent. The DNC is a textbook example of complacency.

It’s already started with Biden calling him “President Tweety”. We’re months before the official nomination and Uncle Joe is already screwing the pooch instead of campaigning smart(cf. this incident; cf. “Biden don’t need no digital strategy manager”. etc., etc. – past, present and future).

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I suspect that if Biden wins (and especially if the Democrats take the Senate) we’ll start to see several of the Republicans saying they were always opposed to Trump’s criminality.

He has already been saying that current events are suggesting major changes in his policy positions. I think his strategy will be to say that he is now a member of the left. (We’re already seeing that in Congress, where bluedogs like Jimmy Panetta and Darren Soto have joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The idea that you can be a member of both the CPC and the NDC at the same time is bizarre.)

Should we let Biden get away with this? I’m torn. The GOP let the Tea Party, and then Trump’s white nationalist party, claim to be Republicans, and now they define the party.

I’m also not confident that he will implement those plans, and not confident that his campaign won’t get complacent.

I agree. However, his recent policy advisor appointments have been good ones, and he seems to be drawing as much as possible from the Obama campaign (which was effective) and not from the HRC campaign, so there is some cause for optimism.

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