Look, Joe Scarborough is a hectoring blowhard. That has to be factored into any reading of anything he says. But even so, it's a little much to have him essentially lecturing Marc Morial, president of the Urban League, on how the Urban League’s endorsement priorities are all wrong. Hillary Clinton will be meeting with Urban League leaders soon, and when asked about Bernie Sanders (who has been invited to meet with the group):
"I think he's a credible individual and I think he's sincere," Morial said of Sanders. "But the real question, the real question is who would make the best person to carry the banner the fall for the Democratic Party? Who would make the strongest candidate? And who would make the best president?"
Scarborough interrupted to explain the correct priorities:
"If you're the Urban League, isn't the question who would help black voters the most?" he asked Morial. "Whose policies would actually break away the ongoing vicious cycle we have where the rich get poorer, the poorer—I mean the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, isn't that what's critical? Because it's black Americans who share the disproportionate burden of those numbers."
When Morial argued that “who offers to African-Americans an opportunity to be a significant part of their governing coalition once they become president” is crucial for the Urban League, Scarborough instructed him that no, jobs were more important, with or without African-American input on the policies, apparently. A seat at the table vs. the substance of campaign proposals is a reasonable debate to have under some circumstances. It’s maybe not something for a white conservative talk show host to be lecturing the president of the Urban League about.
And if it’s reasonable to have questions about Morial’s transactional view, it’s also worth asking why Joe Scarborough is implicitly making the case that the Urban League really should endorse Bernie Sanders. Sanders is not a Scarborough-type candidate, to say the least, so you have to wonder if this line of whitesplain-y questioning was another instance of Republicans trying to promote Sanders for cynical reasons.
Mostly, though, Joe Scarborough just shouldn’t be offering up this kind of lecture about what a civil rights organization’s real priorities should be.