Democratic voters will always be very fine people to Biden, no matter whom they hate.
Joe Biden has spent the past five years claiming that he was impelled to run for president (for the third time) in 2020 by the spectacle of antisemitic marchers at Charlottesville in 2017, and by Donald Trump’s reaction to them. He’s made it the moral centerpiece of his presidency. And yet, he has now become exactly what he claimed to denounce.
Biden in 2017 argued in an Atlantic op-ed:
Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate. We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support. This is a moment for this nation to declare what the president can’t with any clarity, consistency, or conviction: There is no place for these hate groups in America. Hatred of blacks, Jews, immigrants — all who are seen as “the other” — won’t be accepted or tolerated or given safe harbor anywhere in this nation. . . . we should never forget the courage of that small group of University of Virginia students who stared down the mob and its torches on that Friday night.
Here’s what Biden said in announcing his campaign in April 2019:
Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years. It was there, in August of 2017, that we saw Klansmen, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis come out into the open — their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging, bearing the fangs of racism. They chanted the same anti-Semitic and racist bile heard across Europe in the 1930s and 40s. They were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued. A brave young woman lost her life.
And that’s when we heard words from the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of our nation. He said there were some “very fine people on both sides.” With those words, the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.
In an August 2019 back-and-forth with Joel Pollak of Breitbart — back when he still did interviews — Biden defended his attack on Trump’s Charlottesville statement: “Let’s get this straight — he said there were very fine people in both groups. They were chanting antisemitic slogans, carrying flags.” You can watch Biden in September 2019 tell Stephen Colbert that Charlottesville was what decided him on running (starting at 3:26):
Biden has made a point of commemorating the anniversary, with a campaign proclamation in 2020 and a White House statement in 2021, essentially repeating the same descriptions. (He has, however, not actually visited Charlottesville). Biden in each of these cases was compressing the events: The neo-Nazi torch rally was a sad, overhyped, poorly attended event on Friday night, which ended peaceably because there was such a high ratio of press to demonstrators; the more widely advertised Saturday demonstration, which featured counter-protestors and wasn’t comparably drenched in antisemitic sloganeering, is where things turned violent and a white supremacist from Ohio drove his car into a crowd, killing a female counter-protestor.
Trump didn’t comment after the Friday night rally, but he was badgered by the press for days after the chaos of Saturday. I’ve walked in detail before through the Trump statements on Saturday, then on Monday, and then in a Tuesday press gaggle at Trump Tower — I’ll summarize a compressed version here. On Saturday, speaking without all the facts, Trump offered an off-the-cuff denunciation that had some strong elements but also drew an unnecessary equivalence, including saying, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.” Monday’s prepared statement was more pointed: “Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
That wasn’t enough for the press, and Trump bristled Tuesday when asked specifically to denounce “the alt-right”: “Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at . . . the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? . . . I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I’m saying is this: You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs — and it was vicious and it was horrible.” Trump compounded the mixed message by arguing that it was unfair to blame everybody who came to the Saturday rally:
THE PRESIDENT: I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E. Lee…Yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. If you look at both sides — I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And if you reported it accurately, you would say.
Q The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest —
THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves — and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group...And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.
Q Who are the good people? Sir, I just didn’t understand what you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? I just don’t understand what you were saying.
THE PRESIDENT: No, no. There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest — because I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this: There are two sides to a story.
Fair-minded people can judge this statement differently, but two things were clear at the time. First, Trump denounced racism and political violence, and named names of groups on his own side of the political spectrum. Second, he also insisted on casting blame and a certain level of equivalence on both sides, balked at denouncing groups he saw as his own allies, and insisted that the broader protests (in this case, against tearing down a Robert E. Lee statue) were for a defensible cause and attracted people of good faith alongside the extremists. For my own part, while I’ve criticized the persistent effort to misrepresent what Trump said, I said then and still contend that it was both bad politics and bad moral leadership in that moment for Trump to muddle the denunciation of white supremacists either by pointing to the other side or trying to defend “very fine people” who may have been marching alongside open racists. Sometimes, it’s the president’s job to meet the moment and do so with clarity that gives no refuge to “both sides” ambiguity.
That’s something that Biden has struggled with throughout his career when it comes time to call out his own allies. He was, and remained for decades, warm friend and allies with Dixiecrat segregationists, even delivering eulogies as late as 2019 and reminiscing about those friendships. He remains a close friend and ally of Al Sharpton, the leader of multiple fatal antisemitic pogroms. As Biden told Sharpton when speaking to his National Action Network two weeks ago, “We’ve known each other for a long time. I’m grateful not only for your leadership and partnership but, quite frankly, more importantly for your friendship.” In 2020, months into the George Floyd riots, Biden’s denunciation carefully pointed fingers at both sides while refusing to specify anyone on his own side and seeking to bolster their sense of justification:
I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by any one, whether on the left or the right. . . . As a country, we must condemn the incitement of hate and resentment that led to this deadly clash. It is not a peaceful protest when you go out spoiling for a fight. . . . And now we have to stand against violence in every form it takes. Violence we’ve seen again and again and again, of unwarranted police shooting, excessive force, seven bullets in the back of Jacob Blake. Knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing of Breonna Taylor in her own apartment, violence of extremists and opportunists, right wing militias. . . . And to derail any hope and support for progress, the senseless violence of looting and burning and destruction of property. I want to make it absolutely clear, so I’m going to be very clear about all of this, rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. [Emphasis added.]
Now, Biden’s at it again. On Monday, Biden was asked about the horrific antisemitism on display in campus protests at elite colleges dominated by the Left, and he responded with another both-sides statement seeking to offer justification to the causes of the protestors:
Q Mr. President, what’s your message to the protesters?
Q Do you condemn the antisemitic protests on college campuses?
THE PRESIDENT: I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians and their — how they’re being —
Biden didn’t manage to complete the thought, as often happens to him these days. But his instinct was clear: He must give cover to the people running around claiming “genocide” and telling Jews to go “back to Poland,” where the extermination camps were. As if some unspecified group “who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians” are currently engaging in anything even remotely comparable at this moment in this country. Sometimes, it’s the president’s job to meet the moment with clarity. Like Trump, Biden put out written statements that were better than this, but fumbled when asked in person to take a strong stand against people whose votes he needs in November. It’s the exact same political and moral error that Trump made after Charlottesville.
Also, Biden’s idea of handling antisemitism emanating from the campus left is, “I’ve set up a program to deal with that,” which is a long way from writing in 2017 that “there is no place for these hate groups in America” and that “hatred . . . won’t be accepted or tolerated or given safe harbor anywhere in this nation.” Is there a place, a safe harbor, for the pro-Hamas left in Joe Biden’s America? In Joe Biden’s party? In Joe Biden’s White House itself? We can see that there is. Because Democratic voters will always be very fine people to Biden, no matter whom they hate.