By In November, The New York Times reported that “Black voters are more disconnected from the Democratic Party than they have been in decades, frustrated with what many see as inaction on their political priorities and unhappy with President Biden, a candidate they helped lift to the White House just three years ago.
New polls by The New York Times and Siena College found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important battleground states said they would support former President Donald J. Trump in next year’s election, and 71 percent would back Mr. Biden.
The drift in support is striking, given that Mr. Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and 6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12 percent of the Black vote in nearly half a century.
Mr. Biden has a year to shore up his standing, but if numbers like these held up across the country in November 2024, they would amount to a historic shift: No Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights era has earned less than 80 percent of the Black vote.”
Desperate to save their campaign from the voting public noticing how bad they are at their jobs, both the president and vice president are kicking off their re-election campaign by trying to shore up their base.
That’s hardly a sign that things are going well.
Joe Biden will be heading to Charleston, South Carolina, next week to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church.
It will be the president’s first trip to the storied church since he was vice president. Biden is expected to speak at the church, his campaign told reporters on Tuesday evening. It is one of the oldest Black churches in the South and the site where nine parishioners were shot and killed by a white supremacist in 2015, writes Politico.
“Because whether it is white supremacists descending on a historic American city of Charlottesville, the assault on our nation’s capital on Jan. 6, or white supremacists murdering churchgoers at Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago, America is worried about the rise in political violence and determined to stand against it,” principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a call with reporters.
Campaign aides say the two visits are meant to send a clear signal that they aren’t taking Black voters for granted. They’re also trying to put a face to the benefits they believe the administration has provided.
“We’re not going to wait and parachute into these communities at the last minute and ask them for their vote. We’re going to earn their vote,” Fulks said. “We know that we have to communicate to these constituencies about what this administration has done. We have to communicate with these constituencies about the dangers that the other side poses. And we’re going to do both. But voters of color are the ones who have the most at stake in this election. And we need to make sure that every single one of them understands the choice in front of them.”
In the summer of 2022, the White House was criticized following a “mass exodus of black staffers.”
The turnover among African American staff at the White House has been particularly notable. In May, Politico reported, “At least 21 Black staffers have left the White House since late last year or are planning to leave soon. Some of those who remain say it’s no wonder why: They describe a work environment with little support from their superiors and fewer chances for promotion….The departures have been so pronounced that, according to one current and one former White House official, some Black aides have adopted a term for them: “Blaxit.”
Last spring, First Lady Jill Biden, fresh off comparing Hispanic people to tacos, found herself in hot water after saying that both the runner-ups in the women’s college basketball tournament, the predominantly white Iowa Hawkeyes, should celebrate at the White House along with the predominantly black LSU Tigers.
In December, White House aides reportedly met with prominent black Democrats in hopes of discovering why the African American community, particularly black men, might not like high inflation “Bidenomics,” constantly focusing on culture war issues, and an immigration policy that has forced liberal urban areas tell the federal government that they are overwhelmed.
The Daily Caller reported that “prominent black male Democrats, such as Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Rep. Steven Horsford, who met with the White House suggested that the administration needs to do a better job at emphasizing how it has helped black men, some of the aides in attendance told the NYT. During the meeting, attendees told the NYT that the group was in a general agreement that Biden has snubbed black males, instead focusing more on black females since his 2020 campaign.”
“It’s clear that there’s been a focus on Black women and the question becomes, has there been an equal focus on Black men?” Richmond told The New York Times.
The Daily Caller continued by noting that “those in attendance, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, reportedly stressed that Democrats have a messaging problem when it comes to touting how the administration has helped black males.”
Democrats never acknowledge their actions might be the problem or turning people off, regardless of their skin color. It’s always described as a communication problem.
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