In an e-mail on “The truth about Joe Manchin,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx/W’chester) tries to use the backlash against his race-baiting of fellow Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin to fundraise for his re-election. Adding to his chutzpah is a warning that “this email mentions strongly racist remarks.”
Talking with CNN’s Don Lemon, Bowman made the odious charge that Manchin’s real issue with the Build Back Better bill is that it “disproportionately supports people of color.” It is, he ranted, “an example of Joe Manchin, as a white man, showing that he doesn’t care about black people, he doesn’t care about Latinos, he doesn’t care about immigrants, he doesn’t care about women, and he doesn’t care about the poor.”
His apparent logic: Manchin is a white millionaire and privileged — ergo, he’s a racist.
In his fundraising missive, Bowman also includes screenshots of news reports from Fox News and Breitbart (the left assumes those outlets are racists, too) to suggest he’s being attacked. Yet it’s just those outlets reporting on his racial slur.
The e-mail further quotes what he says are “dozens of calls from supporters of Joe Manchin’s decision,” packed with venom and racial talk not unlike Bowman’s own initial slurs.
Then Bowman doubles down: “And to all of those who believe this is not about race — as long as the beneficiaries of Manchin’s intransigence continue to be primarily white, and those who continue to suffer are poor, women, Black, brown, and Latino, this will always be an issue embedded in racism, in addition to sexism and classism.”
Sadly, the only racism evident is Bowman’s own bigotry.
America is better than this, and the congressman should be better than his disgraceful game here.
Manchin, meanwhile, sent a Christmas message to his constituents calling for “greater understanding of one another.” That makes him a far better face for the Democratic Party than Jamaal Bowman.
