Because the mainstream media is only barely bothering to cover the story (and to the extent that they are, it’s in the most “brush it under the rug” manner possible), Joe Biden’s campaign team feels little pressure to scramble their way back from the candidate’s astonishingly-awful remark last Friday on The Breakfast Club radio show.
Your average white politician would be looking for the exits after saying that, if you don’t know whether or not you’re voting for them, “you ain’t black,” but then again, your average politician would already be disqualified for the Tara Reade allegations. Fact is, Biden is the Democratic Party’s only hope…and they aren’t about to let anything ruin his chances.
Even knowing that his campaign surrogates are affecting a tone of “there’s no story here,” however, it was pretty remarkable to watch Democratic strategist Joel Payne basically double-down on Biden’s original remarks.
In an interview with CBS News this week, Payne suggested that Trump supporters wearing “you ain’t black” t-shirts in mockery of Biden were actually just paid models. And why else would you say that if you didn’t agree with Biden’s assertion that black people (real black people, that is) would only support him for president?
“Those two models you showed wearing those shirts – I wonder if they’d actually vote for Donald Trump. That might be a good question for an industrial journalist to dig into,” Payne said.
Well, that smirking remark left the door wide open for Harrison Floyd and Gail Wilson of “Black Voices for Trump” to hit back hard.
“Hey @cbsnews, look at our model,” they wrote, linking a video to Floyd dancing to some Kanye music. “Oh, we mean our full-time staffer who is the Black Voices for Trump Executive Director.”
They continued: “Rolling through #FakeNewsMedia like…@HW_Floyd.”
In a tweet, Payne at least had to good graces to admit that he was “super embarrassed” and that he “probably should not have made that assumption.”
Yeah. Probably not.
The media isn’t going to hammer Biden over this fantastically-racist comment, but you can bet that black voters are paying attention. Many Democrats in the black community have just about had it up to here with the Democratic Party taking their votes for granted. A few more truth bombs like the one Biden dropped, and they may just stay home in November and leave the Democrats to fend for themselves.
