Biden's in Trouble, Part I

A poll reported by the New York Times is ominous for the President

Three weeks ago, I wrote that, while Trump and Biden were running even in the polls, I thought Biden had the edge for next year’s general election, because I just didn’t see how Trump was making or could make gains among the undecided (assuming there are any truly undecided).

Today, there’s evidence I might need to re-think that. I still doubt that Trump is making any converts. But what might be happening is something I underestimated: that while Trump fails to gain, Biden is slipping.

The evidence is in a NYT article by Nate Cohn titled, “Consistent Signs of Erosion in Black and Hispanic Support for Biden.” The subhead is, “It’s a weakness that could manifest itself as low Democratic turnout even if Trump and Republicans don’t gain among those groups.”

Why is this important? Because, as the last two presidential elections tell us, even a marginal erosion of black support for Biden in, say, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia could throw Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania to Trump, and with it the election.

The Times notes:

On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents.

The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.

Given Biden’s narrow winning margins in just a few swing states last time, a slippage to that extent would make Biden’s winning them again a long shot, and probably put Trump in the White House.

The Democratic Party’s share of support among non-white voters has slipped across every demographic category — gender, age, education and income.

Mr. Biden’s tepid support among these voters appears to be mostly responsible for the close race in early national surveys, which show Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump all but tied among registered voters even as Mr. Biden runs as well among white voters as he did four years ago.

Could it be that black voters have had enough of their cities being hollowed out by roving gangs of thieves, with the consequent dozens of store closures; or of their young men being murdered while prosecution standards go flaccid under progressive DA’s; or of public education dooming their kids to lousy jobs or no jobs because they never learn to read or add or speak decent English?

I don’t know. I’m not a sociologist. But sooner or later, these things were bound to register, and black people — whom the Left has taken for years as ciphers and fools — might be in the process of showing they’re no such thing.

…the possibility that [Biden’s] standing will remain beneath the already depressed levels of the last presidential election should not be discounted. Democrats have lost ground among nonwhite voters in almost every election over the last decade, even as racially charged fights over everything from a border wall to kneeling during the national anthem might have been expected to produce the exact opposite result.

That passage wonderfully illustrates how much the stupid passes for the sage among those who write the NYT (and a legion of other, similarly liberal outlets). Hey Lefties, wake up! Neither working class black people (nor any other working class people who think) are going to be thrilled when illegal immigrants are taking their jobs, and doing so just as the taxes they pay are financing the services illegals absorb. And the Times’ breezy assumption that blacks support gestures of contempt for the United States is worse than merely patronizing. It’s disgusting and almost certainly false — or, as the Times would airily say, “without evidence.”

I mean, hello! Just because the Harvard and NYU and Vassar grads who work at the Times have had their brains turned to mush doesn’t mean that black people have. People who have to live with their daily dose of wages falling behind Bidenflation, and crime and drugs and vagrancy at the streetcorner, and failing and dangerous public schools, have a grip on reality that the editing room at the Times could really use but has next to no chance of getting.

Many of Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities — like his age and inflation — could exacerbate the trend, as nonwhite voters tend to be younger and less affluent than white voters. Overall, the president’s approval rating stands at just 47 percent among nonwhite voters in Times/Siena polling over the last year; his favorability rating is just 54 percent.

Support that tepid among what should be the Democrats’ strongest constituencies has to be ringing alarm bells inside the White House. If that doesn’t, these two paragraphs buried down in the article will:

The survey finds evidence that a modest but important 5 percent of nonwhite Biden voters now support Mr. Trump, including 8 percent of Hispanic voters who say they backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Virtually no nonwhite voters who say they supported Mr. Trump — just 1 percent — say they will back Mr. Biden this time around. In comparison, white Biden and white Trump supporters from 2020 say they will return to their previous candidate in nearly identical numbers.

Beyond voters who have flipped to Mr. Trump, a large number of disaffected voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 now say they’re undecided or simply won’t vote this time around. As a consequence, his weakness is concentrated among less engaged voters on the periphery of politics, who have not consistently voted in recent elections and who may decide to stay home next November.

When, as was the case in the last two elections and is likely to be in next year’s as well, the outcome is determined by narrow margins in three or four states, each with significant black and/or Hispanic populations, the Times is spot on in noting that even a modest shift toward Trump could tell the tale.

Still, before too much cheer about getting rid of Biden seeps in, it’s worth remembering that Trump might not be Biden’s Republican opponent, and that if he’s not, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s (relatively high, for a Republican) appeal to minority voters would also accrue to a different candidate like Ron DeSantis on Nikki Haley. But here’s yet another imponderable: What a DeSantis or Haley might lose in not having Trump’s appeal to minority voters, he or she might gain in re-establishing support in the suburbs — support that has been battered by exactly the rogue, rough-and-tumble style that Trump uses so well in building his more populist appeal.

It’s anyone’s guess how it will work out. But one way or the other, the NYT’s account of Biden’s slippage among his most needed constituencies counts as good news for anyone who thinks the country cannot continue on its present path.