Joe Biden is trying desperately to make “Bidenomics” a good thing in the eyes of voters — and failing miserably at it. Meanwhile, when the de facto nominee for the Democratic Party is someone an overwhelming majority of voters thinks is too old and not mentally competent enough to be president, that’s a tough obstacle to overcome.
But there’s a bigger problem that Democrats may face in 2024, once that threatens their chances and has party insiders really concerned.
As we know, one of the most loyal voting blocs for the Democratic Party is African Americans. But the demographic delivered a 10% drop in turnout in the 2022 midterm elections, and now Democrats worry they won’t come out for Joe Biden in 2024.
According to an early May AP/NORC poll, black voters are considerably less enthused about four more years of Joe Biden. The poll found a mere 55% said they were likely to support him.
Ouch.
Terrance Woodbury, the co-founder and CEO of HIT Strategies, a polling firm specializing in minority voters, told The Washington Post that Democrats should shift their focus from expressing concern over former President Donald Trump and instead emphasize how their policies directly benefit black voters.
That’s going to be a tough sell.
Black Americans are struggling to recover under Biden, just as they did under Barack Obama. The Trump economy, however, saw significant gains for everyone, including black Americans. No wonder Woodbury doesn’t want black voters to be reminded of Trump. Joe Biden can make any outlandish claim about how great he thinks the economy is right now, but that won’t change the reality or alter the memories of those voters who remember how much better things were under Trump — who is currently leading the pack in the GOP primary.
Of course, the Democratic Party is hard at work trying to boost turnout among black voters, mainly in crucial battleground states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
“The Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of black men — and that’s sad to say,” W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told the Washington Post. “Black men are your second-most stable base overwhelmingly, and yet you can’t reach them in a way that makes your work easier.”
Brittany Smith, executive director of the Black Leadership PAC (BLP), seems particularly concerned about recent trends with black voters. “There’s not a night I don’t go to sleep thinking about what turnout will look like in 2024,” Smith told the Post.
Black voters have strongly supported Democrats for decades, but Republicans have been slowly chipping away at that support, particularly due to the outreach by Donald Trump. Democrats haven’t been doing themselves any favors, either, notes GOP strategist Jay Williams.
“My guess is Democrats for the foreseeable future will continue to do well [with black voters], but I think there’s some cultural issues that don’t typically resonate with the black community as a whole and frankly a lot of minority communities,” he the Post. “Republicans will be able to peel some folks off based on that, depending on the area. It could be a real wedge issue for us.”
The black vote is so important to Democrat voters that they really can’t afford to lose much support from them. This is why Joe Biden, despite all his efforts to pander to the black community, is truly hurting the party.
