Although I am disinclined to defend Turtle, one could infer that “Americans” could mean all Americans, such that African-Americans are not exclusive to the set. That is, it might be constructed as “When you look at voting patterns for Americans, the participation rate for African-Americans does not significantly deviate from the whole”.
However, we have seen, time and again, that othering is the one tool in the Republiopath toolbox that they keep polished and properly lubricated at all times. Turtle could well have phrased it as above. He did not. Stupid is the only dialect he speaks.
Agreed.
The voter suppression tactics are disgusting and where we should keep focus.
McConnell’s words could conceivably just be poor phrasing. He certainly doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt, but the alternative is to look petty.
As I’ve said before, Republicans have raised talking out both sides of their ass to a fine art. The true divas among them have even managed it in the same sentence.
I haven’t looked at the underlying statistics, but I’m assuming that he couldn’t say that black Americans voted at the same rate as white Americans because that would be an easily refuted lie.
He got a better result by comparing voter participation of black Americans only with voter participation of all American’s, regardless of race……even though it’s a stupid way to make the comparison. But he knows his target audience is too dumb to pick up on the distinction.
He may actually have been accurate, with nonwhite voters so low overall, the US average may have been pretty close to 63%. He cherrypicked the data to present a patently false narrative, for sure, but his numbers might add up.
I honestly believe he was framing it for trigger value. It is not obvious that he is capable of non-trigger-laden speech. I doubt he could so much as speak about, say, ice cream without some vile message being implied in his utterance. Perhaps because we are expecting it from him.
I entertained that thought briefly, but the quote just doesn’t support it. (italics mine):
Saying that the AA numbers are “just as high as Americans” doesn’t sound at all like he’s including them in the set of Americans. And given that this is a racist Senator of a racist party, the simplest explanation is that he believes what every racist does… that African-Americans aren’t fully American (if they’re even American at all).
The generous interpretation is that he’s too ignorant to realize that this is a controversial thing to say. I do not hew to this interpretation.
One of Loser Donald’s fake electors in Michigan is pushing a completely made-up story that public school restrooms are being equipped with litter boxes for transcats.
