Ben Yount transcript 6-18-24 6:40am
Joe Biden has a Joe Biden voter problem.
At this point, Democrats cannot worry about Donald Trump voters in the Fox Valley, or worry about former Bill Clinton voters in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.
They need to lock down Joe Biden voters in Madison, Wisconsin and Detroit.
CNN had a piece over the weekend that explained a mass exodus of black voters who supported Joe Biden just four years ago.
CNN's Harry Enten takes a look at polls showing black voters under 50 defecting from the Democratic Party.
"Look at Black voters under the age of 50. Holy cow, folks," he said. "Joe Biden was up by 80 points among this group back at this point in 2020. Look at where that margin has careened down towards. It's just -- get this -- 37 points. That lead has dropped by more than half."
"I've just never seen anything like this. I'm, like, speechless... We are looking at a historic moment right now where Black voters under the age of 50, who have historically been such a big part of the Democratic coalition, are leaving it in droves."
Here’s more…
Remember, Joe Biden won Wisconsin by 22,000 votes. He won Michigan by 155,000. He won Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes.
Those are not huge margins. And those black voters don’t have to vote for Trump, they simply have to NOT vote for Biden.
But why? Why are so many black voters abandoning Biden?
RealClear has a guess:
Donald Trump’s conviction drowned out what had been a potentially transformational week for his campaign. Prior to his conviction, the presidential candidates had made contrasting efforts to attract black voters: Trump through a Bronx rally and Biden through his Morehouse commencement address and press conference after his meeting with the Kenyan president. Despite efforts of the legacy press, it was clear that Trump shined while Biden didn’t.
At his Morehouse speech, Biden did not mention black accomplishments and how graduates should aspire to further success. Instead, he focused on black victimization that might have been realistic fifty years ago but not today; and certainly not for a group of black college graduates. He asked, “What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?”
Trump’s Bronx rally stood in sharp contrast. He was spontaneous and engaging while making his political points. Trump stayed on message, identifying ways for black and Latino Americans to move forward despite the impact that illegal immigration has had on their employment, their neighborhoods, and their schools. Studies continue to find that overall, immigration does not adversely affect wages and employment rates, but there is still evidence that it adversely affects workers without college degrees.
A recent Atlanta Fed paper found that the decline in low-skilled immigrant labor from 2007 through 2020 was associated with subsequent wage increases for low-skilled workers and labor shortages in low-skilled jobs that can't be moved to other countries. This strongly suggests that the surge in illegal immigration under the Biden Administration has modestly constrained wage growth, if not employment among less-educated youth.
In other words, while Joe Biden was preaching racism at accomplished men of color, Donald Trump was pointing-out that the millions of illegals that Joe Biden has allowed into the country are taking jobs and lower wages for black men in cities across this nation.
We’re just four years from record black unemployment under Trump.
Look, even elite black Hollywood types found Biden’s Morehouse speech too much.
From a piece at the Left-leaning Mediaite:
Bill Maher and Larry Wilmore dismissed a recent commencement speech by President Joe Biden as “condescending” and said it paled in comparison to one given by Barack Obama at the same college.
Wilmore joined Maher for the latest episode of the Club Random podcast and during a discussion on race in politics, Maher brought up Biden’s commencement address to Morehouse College graduates in Atlanta, Georgia last month. Biden told the crowd that an “old ghost and new garments” are trying to take power and threatening their “freedoms.”
“What did you think of Biden’s speech at [Morehouse]?” Maher asked.
“I didn’t like it,” Wilmore said. “It’s condescending,” Wilmore added.
He’s condescending. His policies are hurting black neighborhoods and black workers.
No wonder blacks are walking away.
But it’s not just black voters.
Progressive voters are also walking away from Biden.
From the Isthmus yesterday:
Democratic voters dissatisfied with President Joe Biden's position on the war in Gaza pose an electoral threat to the incumbent, particularly in battleground states like Wisconsin. That has not been lost on organizers charged with rallying young voters behind the Democratic nominee for the November election.
“I came to the conclusion that as chair, my job would be impossible going into November to try to sell the choice of Joe Biden to many young people if we didn't come out and call for a ceasefire,” Matthew Lehner, a UW-Eau Claire student and chair of the College Democrats of Wisconsin, tells Isthmus.
Organizers at universities are taking note. For Whitman Bottari, communications director of the College Democrats of UW-Madison, the gap between the Biden administration’s policy in Gaza and young voters’ expectations provides an opportunity to advocate for students.
“We're trying to help Biden by urging him to rethink a position that's unpopular with a lot of young voters,” Bottari says, adding that doing so is the “opposite of an anti-Biden position.” She calls the campus wards’ high levels of uninstructed votes “a message to the president that he should support a ceasefire” and notes that a potential Biden win in Wisconsin would likely be by a margin less than UW-Madison’s total student population of more than 48,000.