Bill Clinton’s commandment that Black Lives Matter activists should “tell the truth” about black criminality would likely be heeded if it were directed at the generation of blacks that voted for him.

But the generation protesting now did not see or feel the impact of high crime that caused the passage of the 1994 crime bill Clinton signed into law before they were even born.

If, indeed, black lives matter, then Hillary, not Bill, would have been the Clinton caught on camera clashing with America’s most pathetic grievance group.

The truth is, however, that for Hillary Clinton — and Bernie Sanders, for the matter — black lives don’t matter as much as black votes.

On this year-long horror show one could call the Democratic presidential pandering tour, there have been innumerable opportunities for either Sanders or Clinton to tell the truth about the real issues haunting large swaths of black population centers across the country.

In February, Sanders and Clinton missed their chance to tell the truth about the fact that in 2011, 2012, and 2013 (the latest years data is available) black people made up less than 30 percent of South Carolina’s total population but committed nearly three times as many murders and robberies as white South Carolinians who accounted for 60 percent of the population.

Sanders and Clinton could have spent the month of March in primary states like Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia telling the truth about the out-of-control carnage of black-on-black crime consuming Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Atlanta.

The truth-telling from Sanders and Clinton never happened, and it never will. And it’s easy for Sanders and Clinton to avoid the truth about black criminality when the media spends more time reporting on the law than they do the lawbreakers.

Impoverished black Americans who have voted just for Democrats over the decades will continue to support Sanders or Clinton. They will do so because they have swallowed whole the lie that they are in poverty or their joblessness is not the result of bad judgment, poor decisions, or illegality but racism and a rigged system that can only be made right by a career politician who hasn’t driven a car in 20 years and a self-described Democratic socialist who didn’t earn his first paycheck until he was 40-years-old.

With nearly 80 years in politics between the both of them, neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders have ever created a job for an out of work black person.

In short, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are impotent before black America.

Sanders and Clinton are beholden to the seven-figure campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood — America’s largest abortion provider, which makes millions every year by aborting black babies.

Sanders and Clinton are obligated not to that black child receiving the best education a voucher can buy. No, Sanders and Clinton’s allegiances lie with the teachers’ union machine — the same machine currently attempting to crush access to quality education for poor black and Latino children in Florida.

A black child in America is more likely to grow up poor and fatherless than his white peers. That same black child is statistically more likely to embrace gang life over graduation. Not only will you never hear Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders address that child’s unfortunate fate, but Clinton will blame “systemic racism” as the culprit, while Sanders blames “institutional racism.”

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders could stop playing politics and address the culture of death and the pathological behavior carried out by far too many black people. I suspect they would if black lives mattered as much as black votes.

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson