On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden's official transition team released the names of some excellently qualified addition to Biden's White House staff, and it was immediately met with derision and resistance from destructive leftists whose only purpose for existence appears to be to divide Democrats and assist Republicans retain as much power as possible.
Groups like Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement - neither of which actually endorsed the historic campaign of President-elect and Vice President-elect Harris that looks to be blowing past 80 million votes, the most in history, by far - now want credit for getting Joe Biden elected, something Black and moderate voters (and especially moderate Black voters) are the most responsible for. Nevertheless, the socialist left, which prepared for only a parade of #BernieWouldaWon hashtags in the event Biden lost, are now demanding that the President-elect turn over the staff and cabinet selection process to people who were every bit as nasty to him as Donald Trump was. They expressing outrage that Biden's staff includes people who are phenomenal public servants and will faithfully execute his agenda when he is president rather than their preferred checkbox candidates who drive their own agenda rather than that of the President-elect.
Particularly being targeted are former Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Cedric Richmond, whom Biden appointed as Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and a pioneering advocate of liberal democracies and global diplomacy, Steve Ricchetti, who will serve as Counselor to the President. Rep. Richmond was an early supporter of Joe Biden's in the primary and a graduate of an HBCU, and he is a rising star in the House Democratic Caucus. Ricchetti, who has amassed a depth of experience in public service and private practice, was the Managing Director of the Penn Biden Center, an institution named after the President-elect and dedicated to things like global diplomacy and pushing rich countries to admit more refugees from war and the climate crisis.
The socialist left, though, wants us to believe that its opposition to Biden's appointments are rooted in their anti-corporate beliefs. Justice Democrats released a statement opposing these picks, ostensibly because Ricchetti had once upon a time been a pharmaceutical lobbyist (apparently he advocated for the companies now developing incredibly effective vaccines against the coronavirus, which I am sure is bad for some reason) and Richmond has received some campaign contribution from employees of oil companies. Jacobin, the premier socialist magazine in the US, published an article lamenting the fact that Biden does not appear eager to have Bernie Sanders hijack his agenda.
Taking these things in isolation rather than looking at someone's entire career are dumb reasons to oppose presidential appointments, but it would at least make sense if leftist mobs had any semblance of consistency. They have none. The Justice Democrats elevated a tweet from New York Times columnist Ken Vogel slamming Biden's appointment of longtime aide Ron Klain as Chief of Staff because Klein has been a venture capital executive, and on the same day on the same platform, posted a list of joint recommendations with the Sunrise Movement that included Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna, the House's top recipient of venture capital money, for Secretary of State.
For Secretary of State:
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) November 17, 2020
✅ Rep. Barbara Lee
✅ Rep. Ro Khanna
✅ Senator Chris Murphyhttps://t.co/wMJkjijhcX pic.twitter.com/8OTCvIISOE
You really can't make this up.
What you also can't make up is the deep disinterest of the socialist left to fight the far right and the Republican party.
Tuesday brought a particularly ugly, dark moment in American democracy when in Wayne County, Michigan, two Republican members of the county's canvassing board balked - at the direction of the Trump campaign, the RNC, and the Michigan Republican Party - at certifying the county's vote count. In a canvassing board composed of two Democrats and two Republicans (by law), the Republicans initially refused to certify the tally that included Detroit, a city with 80% Black residents. The Republican chair of the board even suggested that all the white parts of the county be certified, but not overwhelmingly Black Detroit. After outrage spread and community members and vote counting staff excoriated the blatantly racist vote, the Republicans reversed their decision around 9 pm local time, unanimously certifying Joe Biden's lopsided victory. Biden won 68% of Wayne County's 800,000 votes.
Do you know how many statements the Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, and Jacobin made about the outrage of Republicans outright trying to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Black voters and steal a state that Joe Biden won because of those Black voters as it was happening on Twitter and Facebook, where they have been pummeling Biden and the re-election of Nancy Pelosi to the Speakership? None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
In fact, they have not had much to say about Donald Trump's outrageous lies about voter fraud in cities with large Black populations or Trump's transparent attempt to steal an election he lost at all. As of this writing, there is still no outrage expressed by those organizations at what was likely the most blatant attempt to disenfranchise Black voters since the days of Bull Connor.
Why? Because socialists are not actually interested in civil rights, and the last thing they will do is criticize Republicans on anything unless they can turn that criticism into a way to bash Democrats as well. Because a racist and especially anti-Black thread runs through these organizations.
Pointing out that they have Black and brown faces of these organizations is about as effective in countering this charge as it would be to say that Donald Trump's explicit attempt to keep Black and brown people from the suburbs isn't racist, because it is carried out by a Black man, Trump's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. Throughout history, there have been members of oppressed groups who have sought to ally with oppressors in order to pursue the goal of power within the oppressed communities, and the socialist left's Black and brownfaces become less confusing when one considers that the Justice Democrats were founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, a radical leftist whose political ideology is centered around the veneration of an actual, real-life Nazi collaborator who was not himself a member of the Master Race.
Black people - especially Black moderates - were almost singularly responsible for Joe Biden becoming the Democratic nominee. Black voters and indigenous voters played highly vital roles in delivering critical states in the general election and made Biden the President-elect. Joe Biden knows who brought him to the dance, and he is - thankfully - going to continue to listen to them.
The last people President-elect Biden should listen to are pretend-progressive extremist chaos actors who couldn't be bothered to endorse Biden's general election candidacy and cannot be bothered to protest the literal Republican stealing of Black votes.