(RightWing.org) – So far, President Biden is comfortably leading the race for next year’s Democratic presidential nomination, but independent challenger Robert F Kennedy Jr isn’t giving up. Now, with Biden apparently losing black voters to former president Donald Trump, RFK has launched a controversial bid to win them over to his side. He’s now swung behind the reparations movement.
On October 16, rapper Waka Flocka Flame endorsed Trump’s campaign, which was quick to let the world know about it on X (formerly Twitter). This was just the latest sign of a growing trend — in September, multiple polls showed him rating highly among black and Hispanic voters, which plays a major part in his strong performance against Biden. The president, who in 2020 famously said anyone who wasn’t backing him against Trump “ain’t black,” doesn’t seem to know what to do about this. RFK has decided to make a grab for black voters who’ve had enough of Biden.
Kennedy’s campaign website is now calling for “Targeted Community Repair” — federal investment in rebuilding “Black infrastructure.” The page claims that during the Jim Crow era, black communities were “specifically targeted for destruction” and now need to be rebuilt. Is there a separate black infrastructure in the US? That’s going to be news to many Americans — but, in reality, it’s just a way of channeling taxpayer money to a specific group. As if that wasn’t enough, Kennedy is also proposing actual cash handouts in the form of “direct redress payments or tax credits.”
According to RFK, he’ll find ways of making these payments that “Americans of all races” will approve of. That might be a challenge, though. While black Americans generally support reparations, majorities of Hispanic and Asian Americans are opposed — and among whites, that opposition is overwhelming. It’s easy to see why Kennedy wants to take advantage of Biden’s fading support among black voters, but by stepping into the controversial reparations debate he risks alienating everyone else.
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