Democrats Debate “All Lives Matter”

By Hunter Wallace

In case you missed it, here is the highlight of the first 2016 Democratic presidential debate:

WILKINS: …law school. My question for the candidates is, do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?

COOPER: The question from Arthur…

LEMON: …There we go…

COOPER: …Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter? Let’s put that question to Senator Sanders.

SANDERS: Black lives matter.

(CHEERING)

SANDERS: And the reason — the reason those words matter is the African American community knows that on any given day some innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car, and then three days later she’s going to end up dead in jail, or their kids…

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: …are going to get shot. We need to combat institutional racism from top to bottom, and we need major, major reforms in a broken criminal justice system…

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: …In which we have more people in jail than China. And, I intended to tackle that issue. To make sure that our people have education and jobs rather than jail cells.

(APPLAUSE)

It was a tough question from a “social justice” perspective … do White lives have any value at all in Obama’s America? Police officers?

COOPER: Governor O’Malley, the question from Arthur was do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?

O’MALLEY: Anderson, the point that the Black Lives Matter movement is making is a very, very legitimate and serious point, and that is that as a nation we have undervalued the lives of black lives, people of color. When I ran for Mayor of Baltimore — and we we burying over 350 young men ever single year, mostly young, and poor, and black, and I said to our legislature, at the time when I appeared in front of them as a mayor, that if we were burying white, young, poor men in these number we would be marching in the streets and there would be a different reaction. Black lives matter, and we have a lot of work to do to reform our criminal justice system, and to address race relations in our country.

(APPLAUSE)

Jim Webb was the only Democratic candidate who was willing to say “all lives matter.” Martin O’Malley apologized for saying “all lives matter.” Anderson Cooper bailed out Hillary Clinton by changing the topic, but she wasn’t able to say “all lives matter” either.

Imagine the reaction from the media if, say, Trump had been asked if “all lives matter,” or do White lives matter, and only one Republican candidate had been willing to say that “all lives matter.” Do you think the media would have pounced and labeled the Republicans “racist”?