Former Vice President Joe Biden recently told MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton that the GOP wants voter identification laws for one reason. Racist Republicans so despise blacks and are so determined to oppress them that they seek to prevent all blacks from voting.

Biden said: “It’s what these guys are all about, man. These Republicans don’t want working-class people voting. They don’t want black folks voting.” What Republicans “are all about,” according to Biden, is the push in some states for voter ID laws, which Democrats call “voter suppression.” Then-Attorney General Eric Holder characterized the call for voter ID laws as an example of “pernicious” racism.

If it is “pernicious” racism, apparently a lot of people failed to get the memo. Blacks want voter ID laws, too. A 2016 Gallup Poll found: “Though many of the arguments for early voting and against voter ID laws frequently cite minorities’ voting access, nonwhites’ views of the two policies don’t differ markedly from those of whites. Seventy-seven percent of nonwhites favor both policies, while whites favor each at 81 percent.” This has not stopped the Democrats from turning the legitimate concern about the integrity of voting into a full-on attack against blacks.

Biden, of course, is a skilled veteran at playing the race card. Recall how then-Vice President Biden, in 2012, somehow turned then-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s opposition to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill into a racial issue. “[Romney] is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street,” Biden said at a campaign event in Danville, Virginia. “He is going to put y'all back in chains.”

Without the 90-plus percent black vote, the Democratic Party, at the national level, is in deep trouble. This explains why they race-bait. Constantly.

Take then-Senate candidate Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who, after Hurricane Katrina, said, “[President] George [W.] Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black.”

Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 campaign, complained about what she called the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Clinton said: “We’ve seen a significant increase in police involvement in school discipline, especially in schools with majority-black students. We’re seeing an overreliance on suspensions and expulsions. I’m sure many of us remember that horrifying video of the girl in South Carolina being thrown out of her desk and dragged across her classroom by a school police officer. A classroom should be a safe place for our children. We shouldn’t even have to say that, I don’t think. So today I’m announcing my plan to end the school-to-prison pipeline.” So the cops lie in wait to arrest innocent young blacks? Not one word about personal responsibility?

Actor Denzel Washington, whose last movie was about a criminal defense lawyer, commented on a criminal justice system that many call institutionally racist, resulting in an unfair mass incarceration of blacks. But Washington wasn’t buying it. He said: “It starts in the home. You know, if the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets. I saw it in my generation and in every generation before me, and in every one since. … If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother, and, you know, prison becomes your home.” As a result, Washington said, “So, you know, I can’t blame the system.” In other words, the breakdown or, more precisely, the nonformation of the nuclear black family is a far, far bigger problem than the allegedly racist criminal justice system.

But as long as the Democratic Party continues to market itself as the party of social justice in an ever-racist America, the party thinks it can capture the black vote. Who cares whether it’s counterproductive for Dems to tell young blacks that hard work doesn’t pay off? It’s the votes that matter. Former Washington Post investigative journalist Ron Kessler wrote in his book, Inside The White House, that President Lyndon Johnson, in touting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, said, “I’ll have those [N-words] voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

President Donald Trump, through his secretary of education, urges parental choice in schools. Polls show that inner-city parents want the option to remove their kid from underperforming public schools, where many of those who graduate cannot read or do math at grade level. Many graduate without the skills employers want. Many of those pursuing higher education must take remedial courses to compete at the college level. Yet to Biden and the Democrats, Trump, who wants to do something about the quality of education in inner cities, is “racist.” And “racist” Trump wants to eliminate the competition for jobs held by illegal aliens. Research by Harvard economist George Borjas shows that illegals, especially unskilled illegals, compete for inner-city jobs and place downward pressure on wages. The Americans losing out are the very black and brown workers the Democratic Party claims they care so deeply about.

But that doesn’t stop the Democrats from employing their tried-and-true technique. The race card. Don’t leave home without it.

COPYRIGHT 2018 LAURENCE A. ELDER