Biden says he was ‘cavalier’ in remarks on black voters

Bloomberg

Joe Biden said he should not have been “cavalier” about support from African Americans and insisted he does not take black voters for granted after a backlash over his comments earlier in the day that if a voter is still undecided, “you ain’t black.”
“I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy,” he said on a call with the US Black Chamber afternoon. “I shouldn’t have been so cavalier.”
He added: ”No one should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, their background.”
Biden’s comments were quickly condemned by both Democrats and Republicans.
“Whether it was appropriate for the vice president to address it in the way that he did, he’s fairly clear he should not have,” said Democrat Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPac.
Shropshire said Biden did not make the case for why black voters should support him, failing to outline his agenda and policies that would attract listeners of the radio show.
Surrogates for President Donald Trump called the comments by the presumptive Democratic nominee “dehumanising.” They come a day after Trump was also criticised for remarks around race at a Ford Motor Co plant in Michigan.
“I’d say I’m surprised, but it’s sadly par for the course for
Democrats to take the black community for granted and browbeat those that don’t agree,” Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina tweeted.
Biden has overwhelming support from black voters, who resuscitated his candidacy in the South Carolina primary, partly from his role as President Barack Obama’s vice president. Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders tweeted that his comments were made in “jest.”
“The comments made at the end of the Breakfast Club interview were in jest, but let’s be clear about what the VP was saying: he was making the distinction that he would put his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day. Period,” she wrote.
Trump won 8% of the black vote in 2016.
“It is clear now more than ever, following these dehumanising remarks, that Joe Biden believes black men and women are incapable of being independent or free thinking,” Katrina Pierson, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement issued by “Black Voices for Trump.”
“Frankly I would love to have a policy contrast with Joe Biden and President Trump on the things that we’ve been able to accomplish,” Scott said in a conference call he and Pierson held with reporters.
Many African Americans consider Trump to be racist and his support among black voters does not appear to have budged appreciably since 2016, according to a January poll by The Washington Post and Ipsos.
Just before Biden made the comment about black voters in the Breakfast Club interview, Charlamagne pressed him on whether he would pick a black running mate, given the boost he received from that constituency in the primary. He has promised it would be a woman, and Representative Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement in South Carolina helped Biden win there, has asked that his running mate be “a woman of colour.”