Outrage About Flint, but Not Chicago

A tale of two beleaguered cities: Hillary Clinton focuses her concern for black residents on those most likely to help elect her.

At Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said that she “spent a lot of time last week being outraged by what’s happening in Flint, Michigan,” where state officials were slow to respond to elevated levels of lead in the city’s drinking water. Mrs. Clinton’s outrage may be heartfelt but it is also politically calculated.

Flint’s water problems date to 2014, when the cash-strapped city stopped buying treated Lake Huron water from Detroit, located about 60 miles south, to save money. The plan was to use the Flint River as a temporary water source and to later join a new regional water authority that would charge much lower rates. But the river water turned out to be more corrosive than Detroit’s and leached more lead from city pipes. The problem went unaddressed for months despite early telltale signs like discolored tap water with a bad odor.

Flint went back to using water from Detroit in October, but the contamination continues because the river water damaged the city’s distribution system. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has apologized for his handling of the situation and declared a state of emergency on Jan. 5. President Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint on Saturday, which frees up resources to assist the state.

Mrs. Clinton sees this as a crisis worthy of political exploitation because Flint is an impoverished majority-black city in a state with a white Republican governor. Yet the decision to use the river as a short-term water source was made while Flint was under the control of a black emergency manager appointed by the state. There is some dispute over whether local or state officials drove that decision, but Mrs. Clinton has no use for such details. For the Democratic front-runner, Flint’s problems symbolize the GOP’s callousness toward low-income black people. Democrats will give blacks a $15 minimum wage and free health care; Republicans will give them voter ID laws and contaminated water.

One reason commentators have been so dismissive of Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, despite his strong polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, is that Mr. Sanders has so little black support. Because those first two states are overwhelmingly white, a Democrat can compete in them without black voters. But once the election moves to South Carolina and Nevada, more demographically diverse states, winning without the backing of nonwhites becomes more difficult. In the largest states with the most delegates—including California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio—it is nearly impossible. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Sanders, 69% to 27%, among nonwhite primary voters.

Mrs. Clinton spends so much time praising the president’s record because she and the Democrats need the votes of his biggest supporters to prevail in November. It’s no accident that Sunday’s debate was hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

For Democrats, courting black voters means turning every issue, whenever possible, into a question of racial justice. It means appealing to blacks as blacks, who supposedly share a collective mind-set and who are forever being victimized by whites. On Monday Mrs. Clinton described Flint as a “civil- rights issue,” adding: “We would be outraged if this happened to white kids, and we should be outraged that it’s happening right now to black kids.”

To appreciate the opportunistic nature of the former secretary of state’s indignation, compare it to her response Sunday morning when asked on “Meet the Press” about the 2014 death of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. The city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is facing questions over whether his administration covered up details of the police shooting last year to help him win re-election. The city hid from public view a dashcam recording of the incident that contradicted the police’s version of events. If released, it likely would have cost the mayor black support that he needed to win. The Justice Department is investigating.

When Mrs. Clinton was asked if Mr. Emanuel, a top aide in her husband’s administration, still had enough credibility to lead the city, she demurred. “That’s going to be up to him and up to the people of Chicago to prove,” she said. Calling out a Republican governor is more useful to Mrs. Clinton than is calling out the Democratic mayor of the president’s hometown. Her concern is not the plight of poor blacks in general but the plight of those blacks best situated to help her win the White House. In Michigan, the governor needs to be held accountable. In Chicago, the mayor gets a pass.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal

______________________

Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal