“Black Men for Bernie” founder Bruce Carter says black lives matter — just not very much to Hillary Clinton.
In searing comments that can’t be dismissed by her media acolytes as right-wing carping or white male micro-aggression Carter said other blacks are misguided to think Hillary has their best interests at heart. If “you look at the policies [Hillary] has been involved with they show she has no regard for the black race.”
Wow.
Imagine how Donald Trump’s bi-partisan critics would shriek if he said something like that. National Review would call him boorish and crude. Liberals would slam him for insensitivity and hypocrisy.
But Carter’s comment was not the kind of idle bluster that is so common in Washington. He got very specific.
The 1994 crime bill that President Bill Clinton signed and Hillary supported turned into their own little cash cow, he said. The private prison industry donated to both her campaign and the Clinton Foundation. The Daily Caller reported this February that two of Clinton’s top campaign bundlers are industry lobbyists.
Her foreign policy record is even more of an abomination. Carter said that as secretary of state, Clinton proved indifferent to the concerns of poor blacks overseas.
He cited widespread reports based on Wikileak documents that the United States Haitian embassy under Clinton worked with local American contractors to oppose a minimum wage hike that would have raised daily salaries from three dollars to five.
“Black Men for Bernie” activists are touring the country in a bus specially adorned with their slogan to upend conventional wisdom that Hillary is the obvious choice for minorities. He noted their movement is supported by whites and they even have a white bus driver, laughing at the historical incongruity of a white man driving blacks around.
Carter, it seems from a phone conversation early this afternoon, defies ideological categorization and avoids the shrewish rhetoric of left-wing stalwarts. Ironically for somebody who supported an avowed socialist, he thinks more private enterprise is crucial for improving poor economic circumstances in black communities.
Maybe Trump should make this guy “my African-American.”