Biden's Last Stand?

The debate could be 'make or break' for Joe.

I run into a lot of people when I’m out in the world. In California, that means that I converse mostly with Democrats. Many of them musicians. When the topic of the election comes up, almost all say that they will vote for Joe Biden. When I ask why they think he’s a good president, most say that he’s a good man with a good heart. And that he works across the aisle and gets things done.

Those are the two basic reasons given me by my liberal and progressive friends for why he’ll have their vote. If I ask what specific things he’s gotten done, I usually hear “Infrastructure”. What I don’t hear is excitement.

I have fought back the urge to ask of them the old question that Ronald Reagan made famous. ”Are you better off now, than you were four years ago?”

Of course, given that we were in lock-down four years ago, due to a crippling chaotic pandemic reaction, one would have to ask ‘are you better off now than you were five years ago?’

I think that most average Americans would tell us that they are not better off now than they were in 2019.

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While we’re remembering slogans from successful campaigns in the past, let’s recall another. From the Bill Clinton playbook.

”It’s The Economy, Stupid!”

There is much talk about abortion being the biggest issue. Or crime. Or climate change. But in spontaneous conversations, while ordering a Diet Coke at a local watering hole or chatting in line at the super market, it seems that making ends meet is the primary concern of everyday Californians. Not just for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren and neighbors. And for those joining the homeless population that continues to grow by 10% year on year in the shadow of Beverly Hills.

It may have nothing much to do with either man’s policies, but during the Trump years, there was just a scent of prosperity in the air. Of possibility. Even for those who despised him. That isn’t the case now. Not in a working-class neighborhood like mine anyway.

The dynamism one expects from The United States, isn’t apparent at ground-level. There’s a sort of lethargy loose in the voting public. Particularly left of center. What some are calling ‘the enthusiasm gap’.

I think that this tells us something about why Biden is losing ground with Black and Hispanic voters. And also with the young voters who helped him so much in 2020. Let’s take a quick look at two of these groups. First, African Americans.

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Here’s a couple of articles in two publications rated as center-left by AllSides, the media bias measuring group. The Hill, and Politico.

This article is based on recent Wall Street Journal polling compared with the AP VoteCast polling from 2020. These data show that Biden’s support has slipped among swing-state Black Men from 87% to just 57%. And also that 30% now said they would vote for Trump.

Black Women, in the same swing states, went for Biden in 2020 at a rate of 93% in 2020, and they are now down to 77%. The pro-Trump number in this cohort is up from 6% to 11%.

Perhaps more telling is this report in Politico. Here the magazine covers a barbershop in Milwaukee that’s been selected for a pilot program seeking to increase voting in black neighborhoods. This is no surprise to me. I live a couple blocks from Altadena’s African American hair salon, and like the movies have told us, these barber-shops are hubs of discussion and influence.

Black Men Vote, is the organization. Zoe’s is the barber shop. The problem is that the owner (shown here doing his thing) is openly a Trump fan. The other barber present that day is no Trumper, but has resolved not to vote for Biden either. He’s looking at RFK Jr. with interest.

When a merchant who depends on the good will of his Black customers is fearless about rejecting the Democratic candidate, that tells us something about the mood of the neighborhood at large.

Says the article, “There’s no danger that Donald Trump will carry this historically Democratic city in November. But there is a considerable risk that an anemic showing in Milwaukee could cost Biden this critical swing state — and possibly the election.

”Biden’s Milwaukee problem is a distillation of the challenges facing his reelection campaign nationally: In traditionally Democratic redoubts, polls suggest alarmingly low levels of support among Black and Latino voters.”

I haven’t found much journalism on a shift away from Biden among Latinos, but it’s no secret that the enthusiasm gap with voters 18-29 has Team Biden worried.

Here’s a CBS video report from this past Monday.

I’ll wait here while you watch the video. Just click it.

The commentary may be a little bit lame, but the graphs from their polling are important. This one, for example asks which candidate understands their needs and concerns. Biden fares better than Trump here, but ‘neither do’ is the runaway winner.

Remember that Biden inherited the largely young ‘progressive’ vote gathered by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren while Joe was still playing coy about running in 2020. Biden laid back, while the two furthest left candidates pulled that demographic into focus. When Liz and Bernie dropped out, it wasn’t love of Biden that got their fans to the polls but fear and loathing of Donald Trump, a man seemingly carved from a solid block of capitalist excess.

That election was not really a referendum on Joe Biden, either for Black Americans or young idealists. It was a negative referendum on Donald Trump. You know, the guy who’d been portrayed by left-wing media as driven by racism and greed.

But now there’s a sizable cohort of young progressives who think that Biden is financing a genocide in Gaza with our money. Slavishly supporting a colonial power while indigenous children bleed out in the streets. He’s not exactly Hitler yet, in their eyes, but check back with the pro-Palestinians at the ramp-up to the DNC convention.

For many young people, 2020 was their first chance to vote. They wanted to vote for a path to Denmark-like Social Democracy, and were deprived of that choice. They held their noses and voted for the only blue thing on the menu. And they still feel burned. I think it likely that a large number of them will just sit this one out.

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Tonight is the first debate, and CNN is expecting big numbers. I’ll watch it all, as I’m sure most of you will. But I doubt that either candidate will talk me into voting for him.

If Team Biden has been watching his numbers falling with the groups we’ve talked about here, Joe will likely try too hard to win them over. I doubt that that will work. I think that minorities have tired of being spoken to as voting blocs, who are assumed to have a narrow band of predictable concerns.

I think that young people are uninspired by anything about the politics of their parents and grandparents. There’s really nothing about this dishonest media-driven slugfest that can appeal to the passions of youth.

I think all Americans are ready for a change. For newer younger leadership. For a fresh, pragmatic, solutions-based politics that doesn’t leave us all feeling dirty even before our ‘I voted’ sticker is peeled off and thrown away. Why would anybody think that this pair of self-centered geezers is carefully weighing the long term effects of their policy decisions? Both will likely be dead and gone by 2034.

But these are our two choices. Unless there’s a serious shakeup inside the DNC.

What effect will tonight’s debate have on that? Your guess is as good as mine.

Thanks for reading, -Dave