Black Entertainment Television (BET) co-founder Robert L. Johnson thinks the Democratic Party has gone too far to the Left.
Speaking on CNBC’s Hadley Gamble, America’s first black American billionaire said that the current Democratic Party has no chance of beating President Trump in 2020 and that some serious housecleaning is in order, reports Fox News.
“The party in my opinion, for me personally, has moved too far to the left,” Johnson said, adding that he will not be supporting a particular candidate at this time.
According to Johnson, a Democrat will only be able to take the White House from Donald Trump if they move to the center, otherwise they will propose radical programs that will not resonate with the American people. Since Trump has not lost his base, he posits, the Democrats will have to move beyond the extremism of the primaries if they are to win the general election.
“I think at the end of the day, if a Democrat is going to beat Trump, then that person, he or she, will have to move to the center and you can’t wait too long to do that,” he said. “The message of some of the programs that Democrats are pushing are not resonating with the majority of the American people.”
The longtime Democrat supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016. However, he did praise Donald Trump for helping to make the economy great, specifically for black Americans. Contrary to the doomsday predictions of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Johnson said the tax cuts largely resulted in this prosperity.
“I think the economy is doing great, and it’s particularly reaching populations that heretofore had very bad problems in terms of jobs and employments and the opportunities that come with employment,” Johnson said. “African-American unemployment is at its lowest level… I give the president a lot of credit for moving the economy in a positive direction that’s benefiting a large amount of Americans.”
“I think business people have more confidence in the way the economy is going,” he continued. “If business people are concerned about anything, it’s the clear, clear partisan politics that’s become very wicked and very mean.”
The BET co-founder’s statements echo a recent op-ed by former SF Mayor Willie Brown in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he said that the current 2020 candidates have no shot against President Trump.
“The first Democratic debates proved one thing: We still don’t have a candidate who can beat Donald Trump,” Brown wrote. “California Sen. Kamala Harris got all the attention for playing prosecutor in chief, but her case against former Vice President Joe Biden boiled down in some ways to a ringing call for forced school busing. It won’t be too hard for Trump to knock that one out of the park in 2020.”
“Biden did himself zero favors by telling Harris that he opposed only busing that was ordered by the federal government,” Brown continued. “It was a weird endorsement of states’ rights and local jurisdictions’ right to segregate schools. That’s the best argument he could marshal against busing little kids miles across town?”