Biden Campaign Beginning to Fret About Losing More of the Black Vote

Black Americans have been the Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc since 1960 when John Kennedy intervened on behalf of Martin Luther King, who had been arrested during a sit-in in Atlanta, convincing Georgia authorities to release him. King’s father, a lifelong Republican, as many southern blacks were at the time, came out strongly in favor of Kennedy. That act, and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, cemented the black vote to the Democratic Party to this day.

Kennedy got 68% of the black vote in 1960 compared to Adlai Stevenson’s 60% in 1956. The Democrats’ share of black votes climbed steadily until Barack Obama’s 95% share in 2008.,

But since Obama’s 97% of the black vote in 2012, the Democrats’ share of their most reliable voting bloc has fallen. It was 93% in 2016 and down another 3% to 90% in 2020 for Joe Biden.

And listening to this focus group of black men, Democrats should be sounding the alarm. Eight men of color who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 were asked to describe their feelings about the economy.

“Discouraged,” one said. “Pathetic,” complained another. “Pessimistic,” said a third.

“Our economy is the lowest it’s been in God knows how long,” said a Hispanic respondent who lives in New Jersey. “We keep [sending] money to Ukraine and other countries rather than helping ourselves.”

The focus group was conducted by the left-wing polling group HIT Strategies. Partisan Democrats who read some of these answers might be perplexed. Isn’t the economy going great?

Politico:

The president and other high-ranking members of the administration have been traversing the country in recent weeks, pitching the American electorate on what they have done to ignite a booming economy coming out of the pandemic. In addition to a record of legislative achievements like the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, Biden has pointed to the fact that unemployment has reached a historic low of 3.5 percent. That’s the lowest it’s been in more than a half century, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. He’s gone so far as to brand the policies driving the recovery “Bidenomics.”

Those numbers do not reflect the reality that many voters are experiencing. Inflation has eaten away at people’s standard of living, and it continues to be a problem despite the overall inflation rate coming down.

This woman compared a shopping cart of groceries bought in 2020 with a shopping cart of the same items in 2023. What cost her $10 in 2020 costs her $15 in 2023. Is the Biden White House so stupid that they don’t realize that economic numbers mean squat to most people who have to feed their families every week, paying for food with dollars that buy less and less all the time?

There’s mounting evidence the rosy outlook Biden is promoting is not resonating with the American public. A survey from Quinnipiac University on Wednesday found nearly six in ten Americans — 58 percent — disapprove of his handling of the economy. Biden is above water with Black voters on the economy, but 35 percent of Black voters still say they disapprove — a far cry from how he performed with this group in 2020. His marks with Hispanic voters are even worse, with 50 percent disapproving of his handling of the economy.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said another respondent, who identified as Asian American and Pacific Islander. “They’re kind of like saying that there possibly is going to be a soft landing, but they’re also expecting a recession of some sorts. It’s kind of a mixed message.”

And when it comes to choosing between Trump and Biden, many people want to know what’s behind door number three.

“I’m definitely not happy with where America was when Trump was president. And I’m not happy with where America is, now that Biden’s president,” said an African American man from Cleveland, though he did say he remains a registered Democrat. “We’ve already had years of both of them being president and with no kind of good results. So I’m hoping there’s some other, you know, candidate or alternative besides these two.”

It’s absolutely critical that Biden receive at least 90% of the black vote — more in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Given how Trump continues to make inroads in this crucial constituency, as well as Biden’s inability to increase his white working-class vote, Democrats might want to think about hitting the panic button fairly soon.