Joe Biden Stinks!

His hypocrisy and chronic tone-deafness are blistering assaults on my humanitarian sensibilities.

Here is a politician who presents himself as a friend to people of color, even though in the 1970s, as a U.S. senator, he supported anti-busing legislation. In fact, in 1978, he, along with Delaware's Republican senator, William V. Roth Jr., offered an amendment to an elementary and secondary education funding bill that would have halted equality in education through busing. This amendment would have “stayed” all pending busing orders, including a cross-district busing plan scheduled to go into effect in Wilmington, Delaware, that year. After a 49 to 47 vote against the amendment, the Senate tabled and thus killed this measure. Biden has since said that his position has been misrepresented, but it is clear, as CNN has stated, “Biden was a vocal opponent of federally-mandated busing. His remarks in the 1970s broadly denounced busing programs, claiming they were bad for local communities.”

At the time, Biden’s amendment was considered to be the most far-reaching anti-busing measure to receive serious consideration in the U.S. Senate. Its opponents declared that it probably was unconstitutional. Sen. Roth admitted the amendment would require a court to find that "a discriminatory purpose in education was a principal motivating factor in the constitutional violation for which busing is proposed as a remedy." And it was rightly attacked by U.S. Sens. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.) and Robert B. Morgan (D-N.C.) as a move calculated to disrupt existing busing programs and breach the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches.

Biden said the close vote signaled "the death toll" for those in the Senate who supported busing. In his remarks, he said, "I really think the significance of the vote is that time is getting close" for an end to busing.

Support for court ordered busing was a litmus test for politicians seeking votes from people of color in 1978. But here we are, 46 years later, in a position where we must vote for this person to be President of the United States again.

Here is a politician who presents himself as a friend to people of color, even though in 1991, he torpedoed efforts to block Clarence Thomas from taking a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. In that year, Anita Hill appeared at Thomas’ Senate confirmation hearing to testify that she had been the victim of his sexual harassment. The mainstream media, in covering Hill’s allegations and Thomas’ denials, portrayed the matter as one of “He Said, She Said.” As Time Magazine reported, “For witnesses to this spectacle, whether they're in the Senate Caucus Room or at home in their living rooms, deciding who was telling the truth was all but impossible.” But it did not have to be that way. The Los Angeles Times reported at the time that four female witnesses were prepared to testify in support of Hill's credibility, but they were not called because of a “private compromise deal” struck between Republican senators and Biden.

Either Biden knew what type of disaster Clarence Thomas would be for American democracy, and he turned a blind eye to it, or he was too dense to understand the amount of havoc Thomas would inflict on the rights of American citizens as a Supreme Court justice. In either case, Joe Biden failed the United States and its citizens. He was a poor excuse for a U.S. senator, and he is a poor excuse for a U.S. president.

Today, as president, Biden had the good fortune at the end of 2023 to see inflation fall nearly two-thirds from its peak, and core inflation (which does not include numbers from the food and energy sectors) is at its lowest level since May 2021. But as president, he has been unable to give the average citizen a message of hope that they can believe in.

And now, we have a president who is as inept on the global stage as he is at home when it comes to human rights. In a statement issued on Jan. 14, 2024, Biden reiterated his devaluation of the lives of Gazans as opposed to those of Israelis. His focus in that statement was on the loss of Israeli lives from the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas without making any mention of the more than 10,000 children who have been killed by the subsequent attacks on Gaza by the Israeli military. Throughout the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has been horrific to all of Gaza, Biden has dismissed the claims of devastation and death by authorities in Gaza and positioned himself squarely behind the Israeli government’s actions.

As a person of color, it seems abundantly clear to me that Joe Biden values the lives of Israelis over those of Gazans. This has the distinct odor of preferencing individuals of European ancestry over all others. And as a person of color, I am barely able to hold my nose tight enough to prevent the assault of the stench of his Eurocentric worldview. And I fear that for some other people of color, it seems impossible to hold their noses tightly enough.

But here is our reality. There is a great evil looming on the horizon – one that will bring misery and suffering to a great many people of color. And no matter how disgusted we are with Joe Biden; we must do everything we can to keep Donald Trump from taking control of the White House again.

To put it in biblical terms: “Compared to Satan, Judas is the lesser of two evils.”

Once we put Biden in the White House, we must work our butts off to make sure that no one like him ever gets a chance to occupy it again. But if Donald Trump gains access to the levers of power accompanying the office of President of the United States, we may never have a chance to push this country forward.

Joe Biden already has written his legacy and there is very little chance of his being able to rehabilitate his reputation. History books will list him among the many presidents who have failed this nation and its people. But those books may never get written if he does not win the November presidential election.

Oscar H. Blayton is a former Marine Corps combat pilot and human rights activist who practices law in Virginia. His earlier commentaries may be found at https://oblayton1.medium.com/