Joe Biden
Joe BidenDemocratic convention line-up to include Ocasio-Cortez, Clinton, Warren: reports Whitmer met with Biden days before VP announcement: Maxine Waters reports that Biden ‘can not go home without a Black woman VP’ MORE isThe capacity for gaffs and unforced errors returned this week, playing into the hands of the Trump campaign and ensuring victories of nervousness among Democrats.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on Thursday apologized for remarks he made the day before, suggesting that the African-American community lacks diversity.
Biden had initially said, “Unlike the African-American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community, with incredibly different attitudes toward different things.”
In a tweet from late Thursday, he declared, “In no way did I mean to suggest that the African-American community is a monolith – not by identity, not by problems, not at all.”
Biden, 77, also got into a heated exchange with CBS News’s Errol Barnett after Barnett asked him if he had undergone cognitive tests such as the President Trump
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After saying no, Biden added vehemently, ‘Come on, man. That is if against you say, before you came on this program if you had a test, would you have cocaine or not? What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie? ”
The anger of the moment was dispelled by the fact that Barnett is biracial, and drug use sloppiness is often seen as a form of racist stereotyping.
While none of the miscues are exacerbated by campaigning, they add a level of unrest, even among some people who are desperate to fire Trump from the White House.
Jonathan Tasini, a progressive strategist who supports Sen. Bernie Sanders
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Still, Tasini added, “It caveat as these things he says reinforce for people, especially those who care, worry about race and other issues.”
In May, Biden said in a radio interview with Charlamagne Tha God, “If you’re having a problem figuring out if you’re for me as Trump, then you’re not black” – another remark that was widely criticized as tone-deaf.
The debate over Biden’s propensity for this type of slip-up is a complicated one.
The Trump campaign presses on such moments as examples of why the Democrat is unsuitable for the presidency, arguing that the remarks are both patronizing for people of color and evidence of a lack of mental acuity.
But there are several cases of the president either speaking or making much more racist remarks than Biden has done.
In the first category, Trump has mispronounced both “Yosemite” and “Thailand” on social media in recent days.
In terms of general remark for deaf-mute people, Trump also said during an “Axios on HBO” interview that aired Monday that the enormous U.S. death toll from COVID-19 “is what it is.” He has repeatedly argued, against available evidence, that the coronavirus will “disappear.”
Trump’s record on racial issues includes conversations about “very handsome people on both sides” of racist violence in Charlottesville, Va .; reports that peoples in the Caribbean and Africa are “shithole countries;” claim that the four non-white Democratic congresswomen, known as “the Squad,” must “return” to the “crime-ridden places” from which they came “originally,” despite all four U.S. citizens; and tweeting, at noon of unrest after the death of George Floyd, that “when the looting begins, the shooting begins.”
Given all that, it may seem like a huge blow to the Trump campaign to make many of Biden’s recent comments. But it tries.
Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Biden’s comments on diversity were “disgusting” and accused him of “pursuing white liberal racism.”
GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak told The Hill that the missteps “force the Biden campaign to decide whether to keep him in mind or make himself available if these mistakes continue to happen.”
Such remarks go to the broader debate about Biden’s mental acuity. That is by nature a sensitive issue, and some who have wanted to arm it have suffered political blowbacks.
During the Democratic primary, a rival candidate for Biden, Julián Castro, was criticized for raising the issue. During a debate in September 2019, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development asked Biden whether he “two minutes ago” forgot “what he had said.” Castro later denied that he was referring to Biden’s age.
Biden raised eyebrows last year when he said that “poor children” are “just as talented as white children”, before quickly correcting himself to say “rich children”. He also discussed meeting with the survivors of the Parkland, Fla., School shooting in his capacity as vice president – despite the fact that the shooting happened more than a year after he left office.
Speaking at the Iowa State Fair last August, Biden said, “We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts. ”
Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Maxwell School of Syracuse University, said that although Trump had said much worse than Biden in terms of “levels of offensiveness or levels of insensitivity or thoughtlessness,” the danger to the Democrat lay in something different area.
‘It’s less clear that Biden is saying those things on purpose. In other words, there is this meaning that he does not fully comprehend what he intends to say. … There, the potential problem begins to open up for him. ”
The Trump campaign has called for an extra debate outside the three already planned this week, and believe one-on-one comparisons between the two men will play to the president’s advantage.
Trump aides want an opportunity to debate Biden before early voting begins in earnest. But they are also aware of polls that show the president well behind.
Democrats like Tasini argue that concerns about Biden can be exaggerated in debates, in part because of his opponent’s tendency to speak out.
“[Biden] is, to put it mildly, not going against one orator that is sharp and coherent, ”Tasini said.
For now, however, each new stanza sheds a brighter foothold on Biden. He fixed his questioning while allowing Trump’s mistakes to weigh the president – and by keeping a low profile himself.
That will inevitably change, and it may still seem a bit uncertain the final months of the race.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on the presidency of Donald Trump.
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