Editors at National Review Online scrutinize President Biden’s message to black voters.
Joe Biden doesn’t seem to hold the country that elected him to the presidency in especially high regard. At least, that’s the assessment observers are left with following the president’s self-indulgently downcast commencement address to the graduating class of Morehouse College.
In his speech to a group of newly minted college graduates at that historically black institution, Biden informed his audience that it should abandon all hope. The forces of bigotry are on the march, and, we must conclude from the urgency in Biden’s appeals, his feckless administration has been powerless to stop them.
“Extremists closed the doors of opportunity,” Biden told the students. Republicans, in particular, are busily attacking “the values of diversity, equality, and inclusion.” They’re on a tear amid their pursuit of a “national effort to ban books” and attacking voting rights by, for example, refusing to “allow water to be available to you while you wait on line to vote” in places like Georgia. “What the hell is that all about?” Biden asked as though he had not had ample opportunity to correct the misapprehensions that gave rise to these mendacities.
“They don’t see you in the future of America,” Biden said to the young black men in his line of sight. …
… What an odious passage. It is reflective of a particular fatalism that has overtaken the progressive activist class, the members of which appear to regard any concession to the notion of America’s fundamental goodness as a species of naïveté. It must be a genuine conviction on their part because Biden’s articulation of the horrible ills that plague America runs directly counter to the usual imperative for an incumbent president seeking reelection — convincing voters that they are better off than they were before he entered office.
The Biden White House’s political strategy is not difficult to discern. The president’s campaign has embarked on a cynical effort to frighten black voters, who are disillusioned with the Biden administration and unenthused by his candidacy, into reengaging with the political process.
