Should Biden be worried about losing Black voters to Trump?
2024-04-05 00:31:30
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
This is The Guardian.
In Norway, a woman's boyfriend forgets who she is, overnight. In Detroit, a man is arrested, but he was never at the crime scene. In Spain, disturbing pictures of young girls have appeared, and no one knows who's behind them. Something strange is happening. A collision between people and artificial intelligence.
Discover more in The Guardian's series, Black Box. Listen to the whole series right now, wherever you get your podcasts.
When Joe Biden delivered a victory speech following the November 2020 election, he singled out one group in particular for praise and gratitude.
He went on to say, you've always had my back, and I'll have yours. But recent polling suggests that that support might not be quite as solid as Biden assumed, that instead, something is changing. The recent New York Times-Siena poll shows 23% support among black voters for former President Trump. That's up 19 points since a similar poll just before the 2020 election. Since that polling came out last month, experts have been trying to work out whether the Biden campaign should really be worried, or, as can happen with polls, they're extrapolating a few numbers too far, drawing some faulty conclusions in the process.
None of that has stopped Donald Trump trying to build support among black voters, even if his method has some obvious flaws.
And then I got indicted a second time, and a third time, and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that's why the black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against.
So can Donald Trump really win over more black voters than Joe Biden can afford to lose? Or should the President's main concern be those disaffected voters who don't turn to Trump, but who instead don't turn out at all, choosing to stay home? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.
Of course, we should be paying attention to the relationship between African American and black voters and Donald Trump, particularly when the polling looks so radically different from the way that it did in 2020 or 2016.
Leah Wright-Rigueur is a political historian and the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican, Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power, and she's also a CNN analyst.
But with that said, it also introduces a lot of the, I think, the questions and the debates that surround polling and the imprecise science that goes into polling. So what we have to do is really strike a careful balance between being concerned and being interested in and invested, and also taking these results with a grain of salt.
So, with that caveat in mind, these polls, there's variation between them, but there is a similar sort of story they're telling, which is that support among black voters for Donald Trump is now around, in, around, up plus minus the 20% mark. And that is a leap. That's an increase from where it was in the autumn of 2020, at least. Just, you know, we've got those caveats in our mind, but did just that pattern, such as it is, surprise you?
It certainly feels surprising, and that's why there has been a smattering of articles, of, you know, just scholarship and reporting around this, because it's like, how do you make a leap from roughly 4% to, you know, to 23% in a matter of four years? And I think that there are a couple of things to remember about this. The first is that Barack Obama is no longer on the ticket. And in fact, there has been considerable distance between Barack Obama and the presidency, in a way that I think really matters to black voters. Essentially, the Republican Party is calling home their voters, their former voters, people who crossed over to vote for Barack Obama, people who held out a little bit longer to support Joe Biden in the last election.
One of the things that we have seen over the course, really, of the last eight years is a coming home of essentially the prodigal sons and daughters of the Republican Party that happened to be black. The second thing is, anything, you know, within the 18% range is well within the historical range for black support of the Republican Party. So anything within that range is normal. I cannot stress that enough. The third thing, and I think this is important to remember, is that the last time this polling was done, we were smack dab in the middle of a pandemic, and a pandemic that Donald Trump had handled badly.
You know, they say time heals all wounds, and I don't necessarily agree with that, but it certainly softens the blow. And so what happens in people's minds is they say, you know, things kind of suck right now, or at least they feel like they suck for me on the ground. I don't think it was that bad four years ago. Memory is a really funny thing. And then the last thing that I'll say is that we have to stop paying as much attention to the relationship or what we think the Republican Party is doing, in order to woo over black voters, and look at what is the Democratic Party doing to alienate those same loyal black voters.
That is where the real story is.
Let's get into that, because that is completely fascinating. Again, we caveat this because there are some people out there who are saying that these polls showing big numbers of black voters going to the Republicans or favoring Donald Trump are often based on a very small sample size, that there's not enough black voters in each poll from which to extrapolate a bigger picture. Often it's just no more than 100 or so, and they can therefore be very prone to error. So we're just adding that caveat as well. But we're in a contest where every vote counts.
It's so tied. And Joe Biden has got certain blocks that he did rely on in 2020.. Young voters, for example, and we've said on the podcast before how there are signs they are, support among them is fraying. But the African-American vote, always for Democrats, was such a reliable thing. Although you've reminded us that in some ways there was a world prior to Barack Obama where it wasn't quite the blanket support that people have got used to.
But let's, as you say, suggest, get into why it might be that Joe Biden, who himself believes it was black voters, that carried him to the presidency in that famous South Carolina primary in 2020, when he was written off for dead in New Hampshire and Iowa, it was mainly black voters in the state of South Carolina that revived his campaign, swept him to the nomination, and then the presidency. What's he done? that troubles them in particular?
I don't necessarily know that it's anything that he's done, and more so, what he has not done or the perception of what he hasn't done. You know, performative politics may feel superficial. There's a lot of stuff about, you know, oh, tokenism and spectacle, and it's just smoke and mirrors. But, you know, those performative politics matter. This is one of the things that Donald Trump has really mastered with his base that I don't know that Joe Biden has quite figured out.
Part of that reason is because Joe Biden has run a very traditional, kind of old school political campaign, and that's simply not sustainable anymore. But then it's also, I think, part of the problem is that the policies that the Biden administration has put into play, some of which I think are deeply beneficial to African American communities, black communities haven't yet felt them. And so there's something about the dynamic between institutional electoral politics and the organic way that politics works on the ground that is not translating. And so when black voters think of Joe Biden, I think many of them think this is the lesser of two evils, but don't feel the kind of enthusiasm that is necessary to propel mass and large turnout in political elections.
And that lag actually applies in some ways with all voters, something Democrats are wrestling with, where they've done policies that they think will benefit people, but that benefit has not yet fed through. That would apply across the electorate, particularly actually with parts of the electorate where voters are on lower incomes. Some of the measures that the Democrats have passed have not yet been feeding through. But in terms of the specific concerns, that's fascinating. what you say about, in some ways, the kind of signalling, the symbolism that perhaps Barack Obama was better at in saying, we see you, we hear you.
Joe Biden prides himself on being a very emotionally intelligent politician, of being very empathetic. Would you just give us a flavour, an example, perhaps, of some of those symbolic things where he's not touching those nerves that a politician who needs their support, Black voters' support, would be hitting?
So I'll give you one example. And I think this is from the 2020 election. Part of what they have presidential candidates do is you go to Black spaces, organic Black spaces. That's traditionally been the church. But trying to reach younger Black voters is much more difficult, particularly since their level of religiosity is much lower than older generations.
So you have to find non-traditional but still sacred organic spaces. One area that they have turned to has been the radio.
Listen, you got to come see us. when you come to New York, VP Biden. I will.
It's a long way. And I think everybody remembers that disastrous radio interview that Joe Biden did with Power 105.1, the Breakfast Club, where he said, if you don't vote for Joe Biden, you're not Black.
If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black. It don't have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with Trump.
That is a moment that was supposed to be a joke that came off so badly, given the context, given Joe Biden's larger history and longer history, that it's one of those things that four years later,
young Black voters are still hanging on to, right? In a way that they hang on to things like Donald Trump saying, you know, expletive countries about African countries, right? So that's the kind of thing that should have been a symbolic slam dunk, right? Going on a radio station and having a conversation and reaching a broader audience that you're trying to tap into, that instead turned into this just really perfunctory, you know, symbolic disaster moment.
You mentioned before Joe Biden's larger history. I think you were nodding there, because he's been around so long, a history back in the 70s, where he made remarks that I think he certainly would want to walk away from now, given the civil rights struggle and so on. Can you just, and some policy positions as well, I think, on busing and schools. Just tell us what you had in mind when you said he's longer, wider history.
So I think there are three areas, really. The first one is his role in the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as part of the Senate Judiciary hearings. And one of the ways that that narrative has evolved over the years has really been about Joe Biden's treatment of Anita Hill. And that became a huge talking point during the 2020 election.
I wish I could have done something.
At an awards ceremony last night in New York, the former vice president once again offered an apology of sorts to law professor Anita Hill.
To this day, I regret I couldn't come up with a way to
get her the kind of hearing she deserved,
given the courage she showed by reaching out to us.
Joe Biden, of course, ran those hearings. He was chair of the Democratic Controlled Judiciary Committee in 1991, when Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
And it's something I think that a lot of black women thought a lot about. The second is certainly Joe Biden's statements on busing, where he took a stance that I think was reflective of the 1970s, which is largely that white politicians were firmly against busing in a bipartisan fashion. It just so happens that Joe Biden became essentially the face of the Democratic side, the anti-busing approach.
And we should just explain to people coming to this news that busing was the policy that sought to integrate public schools, America's state schools, by busing in black children into otherwise white areas or vice versa, to make sure schools were integrated. And a lot of traditional white voters didn't like it. And Joe Biden voiced that position back in the early 70s.
I was a defense lawyer. I handle civil rights cases. I sat in on Route 40.. I mean, you know, I'm not from the other side of this. And I happen to think that the one way to ensure that you set the civil rights movement in America further back is to continue to push busing, because it's a bankrupt policy.
Right.
So busing was essentially a solution that the courts came up with as a way to rectify longstanding segregation problems across the country. One of the things that we know is that overwhelmingly white parents, white communities, white politicians, were anti-busing. We also know that a sizable portion of black parents, black politicians, black legislators, were also against busing, but they were against busing for different reasons. They were against busing because they didn't want their children facing racism and violence. White parents didn't want their children going to school to what they said were inferior schools because they were black.
And so Joe Biden becomes one of the political faces of the anti-busing movement. This is something that was a point of contention during the early days of the Democratic primary in 2020, in part because Kamala Harris, the current vice president of the United States, was bused as a child and made it a central issue of her campaign.
And she even directly confronted Joe Biden on the stage in one of those debates, very early debates, and saying this little girl speaking about herself.
I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California public schools, almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.
Because your city council made that decision.
So that's where the federal government must step in. That's why we have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. That's why we need to pass the Equality Act. So, in a way, what this adds up to your reference to the Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas clashes and where Biden was in the chair of the Judiciary Committee. It suggests there are long memories, and those long memories are not always favorable for Joe Biden.
What about the pull to Donald Trump? Because, you know, we can see some of those negatives that are so obvious about him, that his long history of being accused of discriminatory policies as a landlord in New York City, of saying, you quoted one and we can be more explicit than you were, and talking about shithole countries in Africa, suggesting the squad, so-called four congresswomen of color, should go back. His words to the broken and crime-infested countries they came from, even though, of course, they were all American citizens, and the whole business birtherism, claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Today, I'm very proud of myself because I've accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish. I was just informed, while on the helicopter, that our president has finally released a birth certificate. I'd want to look at it, but I hope it's true.
Yet, somehow, there is some sort of assessment. People, it's based on things like focus groups and the like, that suggest there is some appeal of Trump, particularly, not just now talking about Republicans, for Donald Trump. And there've been some interesting indications that, particularly among black men, there's something about Donald Trump that draws them in. I mean, it might even be just an instinct on your part, but what might that be if you believe it's happening?
You know, in all of this polling data where people can give feedback, people will give you a thousand different answers about Donald Trump. They'll tell you they trust him on the economy more so, that his policies were better, right? Then you ask them, name a policy, and they can't name a policy. The group that he is essentially growing in very small numbers, and I want to really stress this because people get very upset when I say, oh, black men are disproportionately the ones driving this change, right? The majority of black men will still vote for Democrats, or they won't vote at all.
So that's the thing to remember. But for this small group that is really growing, this base of support for Trump, for many of them, it's about a source of strength. And they have the ability to do that because simultaneously, they see no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party when it comes to racism. So if you believe that the two major political parties are fundamentally racist, that in some ways gives you the flexibility to vote based on your individual personal preferences.
Yeah, so you're sort of making a calculation that says they're both bad for us. And so it's a choice between a strong version of bad and a weak version of bad. And you're drawn to the stronger man. And in a way, this is something Democrats are wrestling with. It's bound up with Biden's age.
He does just present Joe Biden as weaker than strongman Donald Trump.
We have fundamentally within the United States, come to take for granted that the majority of Americans support democracy. And I actually think that that's changing. I think there is a good portion of Americans, including black voters, that actually are comfortable with authoritarianism, particularly in times of crisis.
And Donald Trump offers that option, doesn't he, of the authoritarian strongman. I think that is really striking. And, as you say, no reason why black voters would be immune to that appeal. I just want to ask you about how Donald Trump himself sort of tries to win over his perception of the black voter. And I'm particularly thinking of, you know, we've seen footage of him there in a room packed with black Republicans saying he's popular with that group because of the criminal charges against him or because of his mugshot, as if to say, that gives me a connection and rapport with black Americans.
How do people in the room, how do you feel when you hear that?
Oh, it's deeply offensive. But it's also a testament to how badly he can bungle these things and how deeply offensive, the deeply offensive things that he can say. And yet he's still trending up. Donald Trump is who Donald Trump is. What I think it says is the absolute depth of tension and frustration that black voters are having with their chosen party in the American two-party system, which is that it is no longer enough for the Democratic Party to campaign on the promise that I'm not as racist as the other guy.
That's just simply not enough for black voters anymore. The problem is serious enough that all of those horrible, offensive, deeply disturbing things that Donald Trump has said are not enough to cancel out the small but growing base of support that he has within these various black communities. Now, again, I want to offer a caveat. Much of the feedback that you get in this polling data is going to probably translate into people not voting, as opposed to casting a ballot for Republicans.
We need a president.
who will unite our country. We need Donald Trump. Do you think that... And there's a lot of talk about who Donald Trump is going to pick as his running mate, as his vice presidential nominee. There's been some talk of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who did run for president against Trump, didn't make any kind of dent.
Very quick to endorse Donald Trump. Some people say he might be at least on the shortlist if he were picked. Would that, do you think, really make the difference that, given the margins are so small in this contest, it could be just enough to win over black voters in the likes of Detroit or Philadelphia or in Madison, Wisconsin, enough to win over some of Arizona, Georgia, to win one or two of those must-win states?
Nope. Tim Scott is not a pick for black people. Tim Scott is a pick for worried white people. And that's where he would probably make the most difference, which is that Tim Scott hits all the bona fides of an authentic conservative, while also providing a shield for accusations of racism and bigotry and xenophobia. His story is a quintessential black American story.
As he says, you know, my grandfather picked cotton and we went all the way from the cotton fields to the fields of Congress, which, by the way, he borrowed from Jesse Jackson. That is a Jesse Jackson saying through and throughout. Tim Scott is an interesting pick for black people because one of the things, there's a study that came out in 2015 that shows that black people are actually harder on black Republicans, politicians, than they are on their white peers, who hold the same exact values or even worse. And that's because they see it as a betrayal. And with Tim Scott, it is the ultimate betrayal, because it's not just Tim Scott who has, again, this quintessential American story, or Tim Scott, the Southerner.
They saw him get up on stage and endorse Donald Trump while citing Fannie Lou Hamer.
We need a president who understands the American people are sick and tired.
of being sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. Which is the famous quote that Fannie Lou Hamer delivers in front of a speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1964, right, as she is trying to get the Mississippi Freedom Party, Democratic Freedom Party, ceded after being racially excluded by racist, white, segregationist Democrats. And so she is appealing to the nation in a sense of democracy because of the severe and violent racism that she has faced her entire life, which feels like the ultimate sign of disrespect. A very comfortable black Republican, using that to talk about probably the most racist presidential candidate we have had in the last 50 years.
Let's just talk positively about what Joe Biden can do to either nip this small trend in the bud before it becomes more serious, or at least to just maintain his position with black voters, given that he needs every single vote he can get come November this year.
So they have to invest, Joe Biden's team has to invest money and they have to invest time. The biggest way is that there have to be policies in place that people feel in their day-to-day lives. So, for black voters, they have asked consistently for some kind of repair to the Voting Rights Act. We know that the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013.. John Lewis Voting Rights Act, pass it.
Then there's the George Floyd Policing Act, right? Black voters have asked for that multiple times. That was the basis of this political movement during the summer of 2020. that translated into a voting rights movement that essentially gave Joe Biden the election. What do they want?
They want some kind of policing reform action.
Reparations, reparations for black voters, is the single biggest issue that does not show up on polling, right? I can't even tell you what kind of ripple effect it would have if Joe Biden came out and said, I am passing an initiative. that is the first stage in a multi-level apology to black people for the way that they built this country. Now, will anyone do that? I highly doubt it, but that's one of those things that he could easily do.
I think Republicans understand right now that the greatest advantage that they have at the polls this year is not this huge, you know, what seems like a huge boost in the polling data, but the lack of enthusiasm that black voters have for the Democratic Party right now. If they can get 14% of the black vote with high concentrations and low turnout in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Trump will win the election.
That is a sober warning wrapped up with some free advice for the Biden White House. We're very grateful for that. They should be too. But before we leave you, we do always like to ask our guest, Leah, a what else? question, something completely different.
And I wanted to ask you about the tragic events in Gaza this week, particularly focusing on the killing of seven aid workers associated with the World Central Kitchen.
Overnight, Israel killed seven members of the charity World Central Kitchen, one Palestinian and six foreigners, including one dual American Canadian, as well as an Australian and Europeans. The president of the U.S. called the group's founder, the chef Jose Andres, to express his heartbreak. Israel called the killings unintended and vows to investigate.
As you and I speak, on Thursday, Joe Biden is due to have a conversation with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. We're going to look in a future edition of the podcast at how their relationship has changed since October, the 7th. But Joe Biden has made a call straight away to the celebrity chef who was the founder of WCK, Jose Andres, who is a really well-known and kind of celebrity figure, himself in Washington, very well respected for some of the social entrepreneurial work he's done there. So, putting all those things together, obviously many tens of thousands, an estimated 33,000 Palestinians, have been killed in this conflict. Why then, given all that context, did this particular event, land so hard, have such an impact with the U.S.
political class, do you think?
Well, I think it's a combination of things. And I think Jose Andres' op-ed in the New York Times the other day really put this into stark contrast, which is that food should not be a site, an unsafe space. It's a reminder of the scale of the humanitarian crisis, that these were people who had done everything right, had coordinated with the IDF, were going on the appropriate route, were bringing much-needed aid, that were just doing their jobs and living their lives, and in the blink of a second, were just wiped out of existence. It's a grim reminder in a war that, for many of us, has been both horrific but also oddly detached. And I say that not to suggest that the 33,000 Palestinians who have been killed in this war are not important, but more so that the Western world has the stunning ability to simply just turn away.
I think what Chef Jose is trying to remind us of is that we can't turn away and that the cost of war is too much. And so there's certainly, you know, there's, the connection. He's very well-connected. He's very well-respected. The work that he was seeing was praised by everyone.
I think the language he used is, we are better than this. Yes, he's talking about the seven people that were killed, but he's also not talking. He's talking about the 33,000 people that are dead.
And it is, I think, a reminder as well of how politics is so personal. And Chef Jose has his own personal bond and friendship with Joe Biden. And that, in the end, maybe also enables these things to hit home, that Joe Biden knew the man, you know, very directly involved in this story. Leah Wright-Rigueur, thank you so much, as always, for sharing your insights with us on Politics Weekly America.
Thank you.
And that is all from me for this week. Do make sure to listen to Friday's episode of our sister podcast, Today in Focus, as my colleagues Peter Beaumont and Patrick Wintour look at global outrage over that Gaza aid workers attack and the growing calls to restrict arms sales to Israel. Just search for that wherever you get your podcasts. But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Daniel Stevens.
The executive producer this week is Max Sanderson. I'm Jonathan Friedland. Thanks, as always, for listening.
You'll be able to make delicious meals easily with the Guardian's new Feast app. Discover vibrant vegan dishes with me, Mira Soda, hearty comfort foods with Nigel Slater, bold flavors with Yotam Otolenghi, and many more tasty offerings from expert Guardian cooks. Experience the ultimate cooking app, Feast, today. Download now and enjoy a 14-day free trial. Terms and conditions apply.
v1.0.0.260408-1-a910ba6_os