President Joe Biden has been hitting the Black churches in his reelection campaign, of course. He knows he has no prayer of staying in the White House without the African American vote.
Black voters are the most significant and loyal segment of the Democratic Party. They must turn out big time for Biden to prevail in a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump. Trump, a Republican, knows well that Biden and the Democrats covet African American support. That is why, in his first presidential run, Trump went hard after the opposition party’s Black base.
“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good. You have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?” Trump queried Black voters at a 2016 campaign rally in Michigan. “Look at how much African American communities have suffered under Democratic control. To those hurting, I say: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?”
While Biden, a former U.S. senator from Delaware, does not possess a natural constituency in the African American community, he richly benefited from being Barack Obama’s loyal vice president for eight years. And Biden would have been on the losing end of his razor-thin victory in the 2020 race if not for Black voters.
The second time around, Biden is struggling to shore up that base. According to a poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs in December, “nationally, only 50% of Black adults said they approve of Biden, … down from 86% in July 2021,” the AP reported. “That shift represents a larger drop than among adults overall and white adults in particular. At the same time, however, only 25% of Black adults said they have a favorable view of Trump.”
According to another survey, 17% of African American voters said that if the election were held at the time of the poll, they would vote for Trump. And 20% of Black respondents said they would vote for “someone else” other than Biden or Trump, shows the GenFoward survey based at the University of Chicago. Black adults backed Biden more than any other racial group in the survey, but the president was favored by only 63% of African Americans.
Biden gets that. So, he’s going to church. He made a campaign stop last month at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine Black congregants were murdered in a white supremacist attack in 2015. He denounced what he called the “poison” of white supremacy that has “no place in America.”
In a speech last month at a dinner hosted by the South Carolina Democratic Party, Biden touted economic gains under his administration, such as decreasing inflation and providing Americans with stimulus checks to soothe the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden also claimed other advances, including boosting funding to Black colleges and universities, supporting Black-owned small businesses and cutting Black poverty in half. His allies note that he has appointed more Black judges to the federal bench and nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yet, Biden faces an enthusiasm gap.
“For Biden, the biggest risk isn’t a dramatic move among Black voters toward Trump. It’s that such voters — frustrated by a range of issues, including the lack of progress emerging from the 2020 racial justice movement — simply don’t show up at all,” according to a recently published AP analysis.
In deeply divided states where the vote could be pivotal in the November election, “including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, even minor shifts in turnout could sway the results,” the AP reported.
Then, there is Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2020, Harris was Biden’s not-so-secret weapon. The former California attorney general, who is Black and South Asian, sparked voter excitement and turnout, particularly among women of color. Four years later, she is viewed as a liability. Her popularity ratings are low, and Biden’s age has stoked fears that Biden might not be able to complete a second term, leaving Harris in charge.
Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and a GOP presidential candidate, is happy to stoke this notion. “There will be a first female president,” Haley declared during a recent interview on the popular hip-hop radio show “The Breakfast Club.”
“It’s either going to be Kamala Harris, or it’s going to be me. And it should send a chill up everyone’s spine thinking about the fact that it would be Kamala Harris,” Haley said.
In every national election for more than a generation, for African Americans, the fundamental question for Black voters has been: Has the Democratic Party done enough? Am I better off with a Democrat as president?
Black activists, especially those on the left, complain that the Democratic Party and its presidents, including Obama, have taken their most steadfast base for granted, never fully delivering on their promises once they are in the White House. They say: Just look at the conditions of our communities. We have supported the party through decades, yet we languish at the bottom of most every measure of vitality — health care, education, employment, economic and business development, and public safety. Our urban communities are overrun with crime and gun violence.
Here is what I say. Come November, Black folks cannot afford to sit this one out. Trump is no friend of Black people.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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