What was Joe Biden thinking?

[stevenehrbar]

Look, I don't know if he's a racist or not, and I can't read his mind. 

But there is a meaning to Senator Biden's remark that could simultaneously be innocent (that is, not even subconsciously racist) and at the same time sufficiently politically damaging that he can't get away with explaining his meaning.



It hinges on these two definitions (I'm quoting from m-w.com)

clean - 3 a: free from moral corruption or sinister connections of any kind <a candidate with a clean record>

dirty - 2 a: morally unclean or corrupt

To that end, let's look at a few incidents in the record of some national-level black politicians in the United States recently in the news, as provided by Wikipedia:

Jesse Jackson

Shortly after the contested election of 2000, it was revealed that Jackson (married since 1962) had an affair with a staffer Karin Stanford that resulted in the birth of their daughter, Ashley. According to CNN, in August of 1999, The Rainbow Push Coalition had paid Stanford $15,000 in moving expenses and $21,000 in payment for contracting work. Separate from the 1999 Rainbow Coalition payments, Jackson pays $3,000 a month in child support. This incident prompted Jackson to withdraw from activism for a short period of time.

Al Sharpton

Sharpton . . . [was] later successfully sued for statements made in connection with the case, and ordered to pay $345,000 in damages. The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones[.]

John Conyers

In letters sent separately to the House Ethics Committee, the FBI, and the US Attorney's office by two former aides of Conyers, they alleged that Conyers repeatedly violated House ethics rules. The aides allege that Conyers used his staff to work on several local and state campaigns and forced them to baby-sit and chauffeur his children. In late December 2006, Conyers "accepted responsibility" for possibly violating House rules.

Alcee Hastings

In 1981 Judge Hastings was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence and a return of seized assets for 21 counts of racketeering by Frank and Thomas Romano, and of perjury in his testimony about the case. . . . In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. . . . He was then convicted in 1989 by the United States Senate, becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate.

William Jefferson

On 30 July 2005, Jefferson was videotaped by the FBI allegedly receiving $100,000 worth of 100 dollar bills in a leather briefcase at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Jefferson told an investor, Lori Mody, who was wearing a wire, that he would need to give Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar $500,000 "as a motivating factor" to make sure they obtained contracts for iGate and Mody's company in Nigeria. A few days later, on 3 August 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and, as noted in an 83-page affidavit filed to support a subsequent raid on his Congressional office, "found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers." Serial numbers found on the currency in the freezer matched serial numbers of funds given by the FBI to their informant.

Senator Obama has done nothing like any of that, as far as anyone knows.  His record is clean.

However, Biden can't come out and give that explanation, because saying that these black leaders and congressmen are unethical will make them his eternal political enemies.  His presidential ambitions are probably shot by his unguarded remark, but if he runs around being contrite instead of giving this explanation, he can at least save his influence in the Senate.


Like I said, I don't know what Biden was thinking; I cannot see into another man's heart.  But it is a theory that explains all the known facts.