One line in Sen. Tim Scott’s response to President Joe Biden’s address was so effective that top Democrats have begun to use it, with some qualifications, themselves.
“Hear me clearly,” the South Carolina Republican said last week. “America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.”
Since then, several prominent Democratic leaders have echoed that America isn’t a racist country, starting at the very top.
“I don’t think America is racist,” Biden told NBC’s Today show in an interview that aired Friday morning. “But I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow — and before that, slavery — have had a cost.”
“First of all, no, I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak the truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today,” said Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview with ABC. Harris is the first black person, Asian, and woman to hold the vice presidency.
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“We should stop arguing about whether or not this is a racist country,” Rep. James Clyburn, the No. 3 ranking Democrat in the House, told CNN. “It is not.”
Clyburn is a South Carolinian like Scott and one of the most powerful black Democrats in Congress. His endorsement of Biden proved pivotal in last year’s primaries.
“A racist country would never elect Barack Obama president or Kamala Harris vice president,” Clyburn added.
Democrats have committed themselves to rooting out what they describe as systemic racism in law enforcement, housing, healthcare, wealth distribution, and a host of other areas. But they are also trying to find their footing in how to discuss these issues without seeming to call vast swathes of voters racist.
“Today, kids are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again. And if you look a certain way, they’re an oppressor,” Scott, the black Republican tapped to respond to Biden, said. “From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all.”
Some commentators pushed back. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote that it “was nevertheless the case that Scott’s rhetoric was focused on a straw man.” But even relatively liberal Democrats clearly see the political potency of Scott’s remarks.
“Wokeness is a problem,” longtime Democratic strategist James Carville told the liberal website Vox, “and we all know it.” He added that Biden’s “biggest attribute is that he’s not into ‘faculty lounge’ politics.”
Biden has positioned himself all over the map on racial issues over the course of his long political career, hailing his support for the civil rights movement at some times and criticizing forced busing and “knee-jerk liberals” at others.
During last year’s campaign, Biden tried to avoid the excesses of the Online Left when talking about the police and other hot-button topics. At the same time, he leaned heavily into racial justice issues and saw his numbers rise when protests erupted over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in police custody. The officer in question, Derek Chauvin, was later convicted of murdering Floyd.
The balance mostly worked as Biden beat former President Donald Trump by 85 points among voters whose top issue was racial inequality, according to the exit polls. But the political pressure of catering to mostly white, woke liberals took a toll even when Biden mostly resisted it. Democrats lost seats in the House and barely took the Senate and presidency in part because nonwhite conservative voters gravitated toward the Republicans over “defund the police” and similar causes.
The GOP tried a delicate maneuver itself: talking up the passage of criminal justice reform under Trump and Scott’s police reform bill that Senate Democrats blocked while also hammering Democrats on “law and order.” The latter approach contributed to the end of Democratic dominance in the 1960s and ‘70s, with Republicans winning three straight presidential elections in the 1980s and then control of Congress in the 1990s. Trump won voters concerned mostly by crime and public safety by more than 40 points.
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Democrats don’t want to revert to the days when Republicans can use these as effective wedge issues during election years but at the same time wish to deliver for their diverse electoral coalition — and believe they can square the circle.
“The best message for Democrats: America is not a racist nation, but there are white supremacists who are trying to undermine the progress we’ve made in racial justice with violent attacks on African and Asian Americans and attempts to stop them from voting,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “The Democratic Party stands for a just, multiracial society that stands for the principle that all people are created equal.”
