“I saw in a tweet that [Biden] was forefronting the Charlottesville “fine people” hoax… despicable. They have chosen quite deliberately to commit to a lie that is intended to make black people feel hated and they are doing it for political gain… I blogged in April 2019, “If Biden does not come forward and retract [a video relying on the Charlottesville hoax] and apologize and commit himself to making amends, I consider him disqualified. He does not have the character or brain power to be President.” Now, more than a year later, Biden has done the opposite. He’s doubled down on the lie and he’s making it the centerpiece of his campaign!”

—-Retired law professor/blogger Ann Althouse this morning, reacting to “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Speech Transcript August 12: First Campaign Event as Running Mates.” 

Here’s the tweet:

Ann could be best described as an  old school  moderate Democrat, which in today’s environment means she is a conservative, a racist, and a traitor. She is shocked—shocked!—that the Democratic nominee for President would advance a false narrative based on Big Lie #3, arguably the foundational lie of the “resistance” that has been repeated by activists, pundits, reporters and Democratic leaders and elected officials for nearly four years. That Big Lie is “Trump Is A Racist/White Supremacist.”

The Charlottesville canard has become the go-to “proof” of the President’s racism by the Trump Deranged, either through ignorance (from believing the news media) or malice. To refresh your memory (and give you a quick reference to cut and paste into social media posts to shake on your “friends'” cyber-faces, here is the relevant section from the “Big Lies” compendium:

The persistent and apparently undebunkable sub-Big Lie cited by Trump’s foes is that the President called the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville “fine people.” He didn’t.  Here’s the exact quote:

“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group.  But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.  You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures you did.  You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name…. I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.” 

For the record, I might join a protest against taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee (or George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson—oh heck, even John C. Calhoun) and I know that I’m a very fine person. I just have a principled objection to statue-toppling and historical airbrushing.

Observations:

• I’m amused that at this late date Althouse is outraged that Biden is using the Charlottesville lie when it is obviously an official, approved talking point of his party, and one of long-standing.  Do you think she really will reject him now? She’s a proud Madison, Wisconsin resident; she marinated in the University of Wisconsin bubble for decades; from everything I can tell, she hasn’t voted for a Republican for President in decades, if ever.

If someone like Althouse is thinking about abandoning Biden, that should scare Democrats sick. (They should be scared sick anyway.)

• To be clear, the “resistance” and the Democratic leadership has given rational and observant progressives so many reasons to abandon the party that focusing on this one lie seems absurd. Of course Biden is sticking with it.

From Election  Day 2016, the party’s (despicable, to quote Ann) strategy has been to bring Trump down by relying  on the power of denial, division and hate, while accusing Trump of promoting…division and hate.

• Let me know if anyone sees or hears any “factchecks” regarding this disinformation. I don’t expect there will be any, which is definitive proof of the pernicious news media bias Trump will have to overcome to win the election.

Yesterday, the media was out in force pointing out that the President had “lied” about World War I.

• As of yesterday, Ethics Alarms recognizes the Joe Biden candidacy as an official Ethics Train Wreck.