MSNBC’s Morning Joe: Dems ‘wasted two years of everybody’s time’ by starting primaries in whitest states

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough hammered the Democratic Party for setting up an unnecessarily divisive primary process.

The "Morning Joe" host has criticized the party for opening its presidential primaries with two states -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- that sidelined one of the key Democratic voter blocs until South Carolina voted nearly a month later.

"I will say it again, there are two wings of the Democratic Party, there always has been," Scarborough said. "There's been the Bill Clinton wing of the Democratic Party that did well with working class white voters, working class black voters, did well in black churches, and then there was the Bill Bradley [wing], and we will just say the Mayor Pete [Buttigieg] side of the party that did very well with intellectuals, did very well with white voters on the Upper East Side, did very well in college towns."

"This year, for some reason, Joe Biden was the only candidate on the Bill Clinton side of the Democratic Party, the other 20 candidates were on the Bill Bradley, Mayor Pete side of the party," he added. "We've been saying it for weeks."

Starting off the primaries in two of the whitest states in the U.S. warped the process, Scarborough said.

"You can't win the nomination from that wing of the Democratic Party," he said. "Actually, we've been saying it for about the last six months -- you just can't do it. Yes, you look good in Iowa, you look good in New Hampshire, but what are you going to do in South Carolina? What are you going to do in Alabama? What are you going to do in North Carolina?"

Candidates spent months campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, gambling that a strong start in those two states would translate into support from black voters in South Carolina -- and Scarborough said that was demonstrably not true.

"It is a disgrace that the Democratic Party starts their contests in two overwhelmingly white states, in Iowa and New Hampshire," he said. "They wasted two years of everybody's time. They should have started in South Carolina, they should have started in a state that represented the demographic breakdown and the importance of the black voters to the Democratic Party."