The AP Seems To Realize The Stakes For Biden and his Racist Comments

 I've written many times before about how Joe Biden is a racist.  He fought against school desegregation and made some terrible comments early in his career.  He pushed the crime bill through in the 1990s which resulted in more black men being imprisoned than ever before.  He famously said in the 2000s that if you went into a 7-11 you needed an Indian accent for the employees to understand you.  The list goes on, but it ends with two biggies this week when he first got angry with a black reporter and asked him if he was "a junkie", and then when he told an Hispanic reporter that "unlike African Americans", Hispanics were diverse with diverse points of view..  The Biden team has tried to do damage control by walking back these statements, but the damage has been done.  Now the AP is out with a story actually covering the potential damage Biden did to his campaign with these racist remarks.

The AP tries to downplay the damage.  It focuses mainly on young blacks who never had much enthusiasm for Biden.  After all, the only demographic group that Biden lost in the black community consisted of voters under 30.  But that misses the point.  The real truth is that the media has told people for years that Trump is a racist.  I don't believe that to be true, but the story line is relentlessly pushed by the media, and everyone has heard it.  Given the huge preference for Democrats over Republicans in the black community, this Trump story line just reinforces a long held view.  So, for many, if Biden is seen as a racist, they are not likely to run to vote for Trump.  The problem for the Democrats is that this group may not vote at all or they may vote for someone like Kanye West who is on the ballot in a few states.  Keep in mind that in 2016, Trump won by a large margin among all voters other than blacks.  The Clinton majority among blacks was more than ten million votes, but Hillary's lead in the popular vote was only about 2 million.  If the black vote were to shrink by 15% due to concern that Biden is a racist, essentially the entire popular vote lead held by Clinton would disappear.  Further, the electoral college would be locked for Trump.

And remember also that Trump has been running much better among blacks than he did in 2016.  If Trump just goes from 8% to 12% of the black vote, Biden cannot win if that is coupled with a much lower turnout by blacks.  If Trump gets more than 15% of the black vote, Biden just cannot win.

The Democrats know this.  That is why they have freaked out about Biden's racist remarks this past week.  There are virtually no people other than perhaps Dr. Jill Biden who are excited to vote for Joe.  There are many Dems who can't wait to vote, but they are voting against Trump, not for Biden.  The AP article points out that young blacks are not excited at all to vote for Joe.  If his inherent racism is understood, he is likely to lose a batch of those votes.  It could cost him the election.