The warning signs for Joe Biden just keep piling up. Poll after poll for the last three years has shown Biden’s weakness in swing states and among groups that should back him strongly, including women and young people.
Now comes a poll from the Wall Street Journal that shows him losing ground among Black voters in swing states. Specifically, almost a third of Black men in purple states say they intend to vote for Donald Trump. But Biden is even losing support among Black women voters. That’s remarkable for a man who elevated the first Black woman to be his Vice President and the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
My own theory is that it’s not so much Biden that’s the problem, as it is the image of the Democratic Party. Here’s the irony. A party that falls all over itself over race is losing Black and Hispanic voters. A party that obsesses over gender is only dead even with women voters. A party that touts its support for blue collar voters keeps losing more of them every cycle. How can it be that a party that claims to be for people of color, women and workers is losing support among all those groups?
Here’s my analysis of the problem.
Democrats don’t talk values. This is a party of people who love 12-point plans. So, they may have a detailed plan on how to help blue collar voters, for example, but they never say that they want to reward hard work. Voters are left with the enduring image of a party that wants to give away their hard-earned money to people less deserving. (See student debt forgiveness.) Then Democrats compound the problem by accusing anyone having that view of being a racist.
Democrats obsess over the wrong things. Even if you take a live-and-let-live attitude toward transgender stuff you probably don’t see it as one of the ten most important issues in your life. You may accept climate change as human caused and a real problem, but you don’t like to hear talk dissing your gas stove or your old F-150.
For Black voters it could be about the wrong values. Black voters are more religious than white liberals and that religion is not Unitarianism. They are less than enthusiastic about LGBTQ rights and abortion.
Democrats think tokenism should work. Kamala Harris is the daughter of Berkeley professors. Ketanji Brown-Jackson is the daughter of a lawyer and school principal and she went to Harvard for both her undergraduate and law degrees. Democrats love to say that their appointments “look like” the group they are trying to win over, but Black voters might not feel that they have much in common with Harris and Brown-Jackson. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having successful parents. I’m saying that Democratic elites don’t understand that skin color isn’t everything.
It’s not about race, but about jobs and income. Over and over again we’ve seen that what works to move more Black families into the middle class is not government mandated programs but a strong economy. Median income, unemployment and poverty rates all improved while Trump was President. How much credit he can legitimately take for that is another question, but presidents tend to get credited or blamed for the performance of the American economy while they were in office. Well, unless you’re Joe Biden who can’t seem to buy any credit at all for the strong performance of the economy for the last four years. Nonetheless and for whatever reason, polling shows that Americans, regardless of race, thought their personal circumstances were better off under Trump.
In the end I think Biden will eke out a victory in November despite all these headwinds. When independents have to make a hard choice, I think they will find Trump just too distasteful. Probably more importantly, the Republicans are doing everything they can to stoke the abortion issue, which is the most powerful tonic against them.
But even if Biden does win, there’s no reason to think that the erosion of support for Democrats among groups that should support them will be reversed. Because the problem is not so much with Biden as it is with the elites who run the party.
And this just in… NPR suspended editor Uri Berliner for daring to question the network’s hard-left biases. More on that tomorrow.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Are you surprised at the precipitously eroding support for Biden? Your list demonstrates at least partially why it’s disappearing. Biden and the Dems don’t have values that match the majority of non-big city Americans. The Dems haven’t had matching values since Clinton. Clinton’s hot air and Obama’s vacant rhetoric only papered over the problems. It ain’t about talking points. It is also not about race, which is a convenient scapegoat for more substantive issues.
Biden supports war in almost any form and therefore the military-industrial complex, for which theoretically a few jobs might dribble down to middle class people of any race, but the vast majority goes to companies with too much money already. The war in Ukraine is going disastrously for Ukraine/NATO/US. And we want to send them tens of billions of more $$$. The current $60B proposal plus what has already been given would wipe out childhood poverty in the US. Not that I think money giveaways are the solution, but it shows where the Dems priorities lie. Add in tens of billions for Israel and the slaughter of Palestinians.
Biden’s disastrous border policies. $150.7B annually for illegal immigrants per Newsweek. Again, this amount annually would wipe out childhood poverty in the US.
His clear support of the Green agenda. More 10s of billions of $$$ for this one. Besides being a clear demonstration of priorities as above, it also comes at the expense of anyone who is involved in industries that are no longer in governmental favor.
He supports weaponization of the legal system – lawfare – against his opponent; the discrepancy between Trump’s charges and the lack of charges against Biden and his family for the same or similar alleged crimes. You might disagree with this, but the very large number of people who support a Trump presidency don’t.
What are Biden’s and the Dems priorities? I think the general public has figured it out. The only ones who haven’t are in big cities. Who stands for the middle and lower classes? No one I can see, but Trump has their ear.
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Thom,
Biden isn’t responsible for the crimes Trump committed or the choice to prosecute him. He has nothing to do with that.
Biden does not LOVE war, he is defending democracy. The choice to help our allies is a smart one. If you want to know who LOVES war, you only have to look at the presidents that START them. Bush comes to mind. He started a war based on a lie. A lie. And VP Cheney got mighty rich off that war. No, I think it’s Republicans who have shown over and over again how they think war is actually good for the economy.
Much of what’s happening at the border are the effects of laws that TRUMP put into place. But honestly, it’s an issue every single administration not just in the US but around the world have tried to tackle. It’s a very difficult problem and putting all the blame on one administration shows a lack of understanding of the true problem.
Guess what: big cities have middle and lower class citizens. Trump doesn’t have their backs. Where have you been? Where do you get your information?
You couldn’t be more factually wrong.
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Thank you Zeek. I’ll pass on any further discussion.
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I think you speak without evidence about the electoral affect of student loans. Tim Ryan very publically criticized that program for many of the reasons you talked about. After this his polling numbers went down. A Democrat is not going to gain votes by opposing student loan forgiveness, while they will depress young voter enthusiasm. I do think Democrats need to do a better job of explaining the importance to all of us, to having college educations being accessible. It is in all of our interest to have the next generations of those who are highly educated – this includes the people who are going to be the inventors of the next COVID 19 vaccine, the cure for cancer etc. Your analysis of the Black community, and opposition to gay rights is seriously outdated. I live in a majority black neighborhood. My neighbors are very much in support of Gay rights. 20 years ago this was not the case, but that’s not true now.
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To be clear, I think a college education is a good thing and accessibility is important. But loan forgiveness does nothing to improve accessibility. It’s after the fact. One of the many flaws in Biden’s plan is that it doesn’t address the underlying costs that get people into debt in the first place.
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