I meant to write LBJ rather than FDR. Time for ninja edit.
FDR did stuff around discrimination in employment though.
Biden probably means that Trump is Americaās first overtly racist president who openly appeals to racism. Itās a problem that people donāt think you are being racist if you are civil and use dogwhistles, but at the same time, even that minor level of nuance seems to be a less effective form of messaging.
The greater point that Biden seems to be making is that Trump is a uniquely divisive avatar of chaos, the likes of which have never been seen before in the White House. Those of us with a greater grasp of history understand that what was hidden with Nixon and Reagan has merely become unhidden and this is nothing new. However, Reagan maintains high retroactive favorability. While we would like to group Trump with Reagan, other people, including many Democrats, would not put them together and would be more swayed by an argument that Trump is significantly worse.
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Not really. It took Truman to desegregate the Armed Forces and then the Government, after which it was easier to start going after Jim Crow.
W may have been less racist than the average American. Maybe his dad too.
But Carter of course.
At least towards brown people.
Totally forgot about Carter!
Could it be that Joe is just badly rephrasing Ta-Nehisi Coatesās outstanding essay The First White President?
For Trump, it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondentsā Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enoughāTrump has made the negation of Obamaās legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. āRace is an idea, not a fact,ā the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written, and essential to the construct of a āwhite raceā is the idea of not being a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potentāan entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something newāthe first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorificāAmericaās first white president.
The triumph of Trumpās campaign of bigotry presented the problematic spectacle of an American president succeeding at best in spite of his racism and possibly because of it. Trump moved racism from the euphemistic and plausibly deniable to the overt and freely claimed. This presented the countryās thinking class with a dilemma. Hillary Clinton simply could not be correct when she asserted that a large group of Americans was endorsing a candidate because of bigotry. The implicationsāthat systemic bigotry is still central to our politics; that the country is susceptible to such bigotry; that the salt-of-the-earth Americans whom we lionize in our culture and politics are not so different from those same Americans who grin back at us in lynching photos; that Calhounās aim of a pan-Caucasian embrace between workers and capitalists still enduresāwere just too dark. Leftists would have to cope with the failure, yet again, of class unity in the face of racism. Incorporating all of this into an analysis of America and the path forward proved too much to ask. Instead, the response has largely been an argument aimed at emotionāthe summoning of the white working class, emblem of Americaās hardscrabble roots, inheritor of its pioneer spirit, as a shield against the horrific and empirical evidence of trenchant bigotry.
It has long been an axiom among certain black writers and thinkers that while whiteness endangers the bodies of black people in the immediate sense, the larger threat is to white people themselves, the shared country, and even the whole world. There is an impulse to blanch at this sort of grandiosity. When W. E. B. Du Bois claims that slavery was āsingularly disastrous for modern civilizationā or James Baldwin claims that whites āhave brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white,ā the instinct is to cry exaggeration. But there really is no other way to read the presidency of Donald Trump. The first white president in American history is also the most dangerous presidentāand he is made more dangerous still by the fact that those charged with analyzing him cannot name his essential nature, because they too are implicated in it.
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Yes, Biden fumbles and bumbles a lot and has a lot of gaffes. This should not be news in 2020, heās been doing it for decades. For most of his adult life, it was the thing people thought of first when they thought of Joe Biden!
Joe should avoid talking about race issues when making broad appeals to the electorate. Turn every discussion to health care. If he makes this election a referendum on Trumpās racism instead of Trumpās failure to govern, then heāll lose. Does it suck that so many Americans are closer to Trump on race? Yes, it sucks very very much. Does it matter for the election? Yes, it matters very much!
What do old white people like about Joe? Is it is progressive attitude on race? I very much doubt it.
Health care. Social security.
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Amazing. Still doesnāt top telling a black person āyou aināt blackā, but thereās still plenty of time. Just incredible that this embarrassment of a human is our nom.
God help him if he doesnāt skip the debates. Imagine if he gets owned by Trump on race. āGo ahead Joe, tell me how you can be a slave-owner who isnāt racist, Iām all ears!ā
Biden 2020 - Iāll veto Medicare for all so you can go bankrupt if you get cancer
Winning message for sure
https://twitter.com/populismupdates/status/1287557388485050368?s=21
The turds on this forum who helped to make the primaries about emojis instead of policy must be really happy - you can now single out a single tweet from a politicians supporters and use it as a wedge to paint their entire campaign as toxic.
A giant fuck you to everyone who pushed that narrative on this forum.
https://twitter.com/wideofthepost/status/1287694011147399168?s=21
https://twitter.com/wideofthepost/status/1287695250597785601?s=21
Also never forget
https://twitter.com/olivianuzzi/status/740367983466414080?s=21
Every one of you that pushed false narratives about toxic online supporters was doing the work of the establishment to tarnish the working class movement. Congrats on being a tool for the billionaires.
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Are you saying theyāre useful idiots?
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Bernie broās being bullies is so fake .
āA giant fuck too to everyoneā¦ā
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Youāre missing the point, but who are you quoting there with āBernie broās being bullies is so fakeā?
You put quotes around it, so it must be a literal quote.
Somebody Iāve never met walks up to me and says āyouāre an assholeā. That then negatively effects me as those in ear shot believe Iām an asshole. After being negatively effected I respond with āfuck you for wrongly calling me an assholeā and you then use that as proof that Iām an asshole.
Thatās called a self fulfilling prophecy and you are a clown for using it as an attack.
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LOL Clovis, more and more people are saying it on this forum, frequently across party lines. I would not say that LOL Clovis is a sentiment that is just confined to one small section of people who support my political viewpoints.
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Except you are assuming the āyouāre an assholeā part wasnāt true. It clearly was in some cases.