An adviser to failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Wednesday evening ripped former Vice President Joe Biden for his “entitlement” for wanting Abrams “to save his ass” in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
In a BuzzFeed report that details the blowback from Abrams’ supporters that even surprised Abrams after various outlets reported that Biden was considering naming Abrams as his vice presidential pick when he announces his candidacy, an Abrams adviser told the outlet that the stories were “particularly exploitative” because “Biden couldn’t be bothered to endorse Stacey in the gubernatorial primary.”
“Now he wants her to save his ass. That’s some serious entitlement,” the adviser reportedly added.
Though representatives for Abrams and Biden denied the vice presidency reports, BuzzFeed reported that, according to two sources familiar with the matter, “Biden’s team has pitched Abrams on the idea of being Biden’s running mate at the outset of a 2020 campaign.”
Abrams on Thursday told CBS This Morning that potentially being Biden’s potential running mate “was not the core issue” when they recently met in Washington, D.C.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” author, recently pointed out Biden’s “problematic” record on social justice issues, and some of Abrams’ allies worried that Biden would use her as his “human shield” during the campaign on race issues.
“Biden said, ‘My goal is to lock Willie Horton up.’ He’s literally on the record making the case for why his crime bill is tough. He wasn’t trying to compromise with the Republicans. This was actually an attempt to get to the right of Republicans,” Coates said. “On top of that, you have this piece in the [Washington Post] where he talks about his own rhetoric in the ’70s and ’80s, in terms of busing. I don’t know if the criminal-justice bit is going to be enough. But you start pulling all of it together, I think you start to get something that might actually be problematic.”
On Tuesday, Biden apologized for his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings when Bided chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Biden said he regrets “to this day” that he could not give Hill “the kind of hearing she deserved” and also argued that the “white man’s culture” has “got to change.”
Still, according to BuzzFeed, some of Abrams’ advisers were reportedly “frustrated” with Biden’s remarks about Hill.
If Biden enters the race, he will also have to answer for his support of the Crime Bill and his comments to a local newspaper in 1975 in which he said school busing was “racist” and blasted “quota systems” for “blacks” and “Chicanos.”
“The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with,” Biden said in 1975 to a Delaware-based newspaper. “What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist! Who the hell do we think we are, that the only way a black man or woman can learn is if they rub shoulders with my white child?”
Abrams admitted on Wednesday that she thought race was one reason that the media and left-wing elites elevated and gushed over failed Texas Senate candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke and did not lift up Abrams and failed Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D) in the same way.
“But I do want to call the question. There is no difference — there is no distinction with a difference between what he accomplished and what Andrew and I accomplished. I would challenge people to consider why we were not lifted up in the same way,” Abrams said Wednesday on MSNBC. “I think race plays a part. I think region plays a part. I also think phenotype plays a part. My responsibility is to investigate running for president because I want people to understand I may not look like the typical candidate, but that does not diminish my capacity to possibly run for the job. That would be true for Andrew if he was interested.”
Wednesday on The View, Abrams, leaving all 2020 options open, said if she enters a primary, it will not be to “run for second place.” She had previously told CBS This Morning that she thought a female or minority candidate would win the 2020 nomination.
“I think you don’t run for second place,” she said. “If I’m going to enter a primary, then I’m going to enter a primary.”
Abrams previously said that she did not want to close the door on a 2020 presidential run because she wanted African-American women to understand that their “achievements should not be diminished.”
“I need women of color, particularly Black women, to understand that our achievements should not be diminished,” Abrams recently told the New York Times. “I’m not saying I would be the best candidate, but I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand the way others do.”
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